I’m an idealist who believes that music has the power to make the world a much better place. Maybe it’s the fact that I grew up during the 60s! I also believe that people that don’t like music are normally not to be trusted. With that as context take a look at the following CNN International article about the jailing of six young Iranians that made a video of Happy…..
Sources report that seven to eight young Iranians have been arrested in Tehran, for the simple crime of being “Happy.”
Three men and three women danced unveiled to Pharrell Williams’ smash hit in a video that was widely shared on social media, garnering over 30,000 views before it was taken down. Copies have been quickly re-uploaded as news of the arrest has broken, sparking the hashtag #FreeHappyIranians.
Many Iranians praised their joyful video, but it was met with censure by the conservative religious forces which have ruled Iran since the Revolution in 1979.
“After a vulgar clip which hurt public chastity was released in cyberspace, police decided to identify those involved in making that clip,” Tehran police chief Hossein Sajedinia told the ISNA News Agency, according to ABC.
Footage from Iranian state TV appears to show seven men and one woman being interrogated about the video, which is shown in the clip with the dancers blurred out.The BBC reported that the exact number of detainees has not been released.
Rick Joyner, a noted right wing extremist minister, has called for a military takeover of the US. The video of this was removed from YouTube based on a demand from MorningStar Ministries, the “religious organization” that Mr. Joyner leads. This is scary shit……the details are provided in an article from Huffington Post below. Note: the article below originally included the video of Mr. Joyner’s call for military takeover but it was removed from YouTube as I noted above. I have substituted a related video where Mr. Joyner claims that the video was edited.
Tea Party Republican — Linked Religious Right
Leader Calls for ‘Military Takeover’
By: Bill Wilson
“We estimate that between 28 percent and 34 percent of officers and NCOs (non-commissioned officers) in the U.S. military would either back or be extremely sympathetic to Joyner” — Mikey Weinstein, founder and head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation
Amidst chaos in Washington, while Republicans in Congress are accused of holding the “full faith and credit” of the United States hostage through the current government shutdown, a leader of the newly emerging, reorganized religious right who has ties to prominent Tea Party Republicans has just called for a “military takeover.”
In a September 30, 2013 broadcast, as reported by Raw Story and Religious Right Watch, Morningstar Ministries head Rick Joyner — a leading prophet and apostle in the theocratic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation who has ties to former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin [see: 1, 2] and other leading Tea Party-aligned Republicans — publicly issued a call for a coup – a “military takeover” of the United States government and the imposition of martial law.
In an interview with former Reagan administration lawyer Michael “Mikey” Weinstein — who formed the civil rights watchdog organization the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) after discovering a pattern of coercive evangelizing at his former alma mater, the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs — Weinstein told me his organization estimated that between 28 percent and 34 percent of officers and NCOs in the United States military were adherents to a supremacist form of Christianity known as dominionism who might back or at least be sympathetic to evangelist Joyner’s call for a coup.
“It is a terrible mistake to dismiss Joyner as merely fringe. The opposite is true,” explained Weinstein, who emphasized that there are dozens of dominionist evangelical para-church organizations engaging in what MRFF views as predatory evangelizing in the military. “Complacency is complicity,” warned Weinstein, who called Rick Joyner’s call for a military takeover a “red line” and also a “wretched” form of “sedition.”
“We are most concerned about a fusion between dominionist Christianity and the military’s weapons of mass destruction,” warned Weinstein, who says his client base, members of the military who turn to MRFF for protection against coercive evangelizing, is approaching 35,000. Most of those MRFF clients, according to Weinstein, are Christians who are targeted for holding the wrong doctrine and theology.
Morningstar Ministries founder Joyner, who over the last decade has partially rebuilt the crashed real estate and media empire of disgraced TV evangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, who were caught up in a 1980s scandal which led to a flurry of media claims that the religious right was spent as a political force, has promoted the claim that President Obama’s health care reform legislation includes a provision to create a left-wing paramilitary force akin to Hitler’s Nazi “brownshirts.”
Despite his promotion of fringe right-wing conspiracy theory, Joyner — accorded the status of “prophet” within his movement — boasts ties to Republicans such as former Senator Jim DeMint, now head of the mammoth Heritage Foundation and to evangelists in the upper echelon of Christianity Today such as the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, and some surprising international connections as well — Joyner has frequented an internationalist conference co-hosted by a close confident of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
[Video, below: Morningstar Ministries head Rick Joyner calls for a “military takeover”]
(NOTE: I can’t show you the video included with the article…..MorningStar Ministries made YouTube take it down. I have substituted another video by RightWingWatch.org that features a interview with Rick Joyner.)
In his call for a “military takeover” and “martial law,” because the nation has been so allegedly “undermined,” Rick Joyner omitted several relevant aspects:
First, Morningstar Ministries head Joyner is a significant leader in one of the most militant streams of the religious right (the New Apostolic Reformation) which, in turn, has for three decades have been engaged in a slow-motion takeover of the Republican Party.
The religious right takeover of the GOP helped power the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress and by 2000, according to a survey released in 2002 by Campaigns & Elections magazine, the Christian right had “strong” or “moderate” influence in the majority of state Republican Party structures.
In its new guise, as the “Tea Party,” the religious right also drove the 2010 Republican takeover of the House of Representatives and of numerous state legislators and governor’s seats across the nation.
From those positions of power, after both the 1994 and 2010 takeovers, religious right affiliated Republicans have pursued an insurrectionary agenda, blocking significant national legislation and shutting down the federal government — in short, Rick Joyner’s own movement can be accused of working to undermine the Republic and American democracy.
Second, Joyner’s movement itself claims to have infiltrated the U.S. government and the United States military with its “apostles.” So Joyner’s appeal to the “Lord” to effect a military takeover can be taken at face value or, alternately, as a coded appeal to those apostles to carry out Joyner’s vision for divine national redemption via a coup.
While such a possibility may seem unlikely, over the last three decades the dominionist religious right has waged an aggressive, ongoing campaign to promote its supremacist political ideology within the United States military — often in violation of regulations concerning improper and coercive evangelizing in the military according to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which fights such predatory evangelism.
In the forefront of the campaign to impose a narrowly sectarian form of Christian dominionist ideology on the military has been the enormous 1/2-billion dollar a year international ministry Campus Crusade For Christ — whose Military Ministries division has advertised a goal [also see 1] of turning United States military personnel into “government paid missionaries” and of “transforming the nations of the world through the militaries of the world”.
In December 2006, Campus Crusade’s Washington D.C.-based Christian Embassy ministry came under fire after a MRFF Washington press conference exposed a video produced by the ministry, filmed inside the Pentagon and featuring Pentagon officials who declared that their primary loyalty is to their religious faith rather than to their appointed positions in the military.
Explaining his participation in the video, Major General John Catton said he thought Campus Crusade’s Christian Embassy was a “quasi-federal agency.” A subsequent investigation by the Department of Defense Inspector General vindicated Mikey Weinstein’s MRFF with a finding of misconduct on the part of Pentagon officials who participated in the Christian Embassy video.
Campus Crusade founder and longtime head William Rohl “Bill” Bright, a close colleague of mega-evangelist Billy Graham, called his ministry efforts a “conspiracy to overthrow the world,” blamed rising crime during the 1960s on lack of prayer in schools, claimed homosexuality helped cause the downfall of classical Greece and the Roman Empire.
Bright, a key founder of the modern religious right participated in the Coalition on Revival, an ecumenical Protestant organization whose members pledged a blood oath to impose their version of Christian theocracy, and Biblical law, on America and the world.
In May 2013 the LGBT rights nonprofit Truth Wins Out released a report exposing Campus Crusade’s support, in Africa, for legislation to make homosexuality a capital offense.
Third, while Joyner, in his new call for a military coup, bemoaned a “joyful disregard of the constitution,” Rick Joyner has himself called for a coercive, authoritarian religious state that would seem to have little room for the Bill of Rights and which would forcible re-educate American citizens:
In a 2007 prophecy published June 19, 2007 on the Elijahlist website, which Rick Joyner gave in tandem with apostle Dutch Sheets, Joyner explained, in a subsection titled “The Coming Kingdom,”
The kingdom of God will not be socialism, but a freedom even greater than anyone on earth knows at this time. At first it may seem like totalitarianism, as the Lord will destroy the antichrist spirit now dominating the world with “the sword of His mouth” and will shatter many nations like pottery. However, fundamental to His rule is II Corinthians 3:17, “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Instead of taking away liberties and becoming more domineering, the kingdom will move from a point of necessary control while people are learning truth, integrity, honor, and how to make decisions, to increasing liberty so that they can. [emphases in the original]
Joyner’s co-author in the 2007 prophetic communique was evangelist and NAR apostle Dutch Sheets, who according to a 2006 Charisma magazine article was one of several NAR leaders who helped ‘mentor’ former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris – who helped tip the disputed 2000 U.S. presidential election in favor of George W. Bush.
While Joyner’s charismatic New Apostolic Reformation is by any account a minority movement within Protestant Christianity, it has claimed influence over a number of prominent Republicans, from 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, to 2012 election Republican hopefuls Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, as well as former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and former U.S. Senator-turned Kansas governor Sam Brownback.
Underlying the ideological and political extremity of the NAR, consider several data points:
1) The NAR has been tied [see 1, 2] to an effort, in the African country of Uganda, to legislate LGBTI citizens out of existence and one of the NAR’s prominent prophets, TheCall founder Lou Engle, through his ministry behind a 2008 GOTV campaign in favor of California’s anti-same sex marriage Proposition 8 ballot initiative.
2) C. Peter Wagner, perhaps the NAR’s leading theorist and political organizer, promotes a “theology of war,” traces his movement’s dominion theology to the writing of Christian Reconstructism founder R.J. Rushdoony, and calls upon believers to take over significant sectors of society, the so-called “Seven Mountains” and rule “like kings.”
3) Wagner and other top theorists in his movement, such as Ed Silvoso and Cindy Jacobs (each regarded as serving the dual roles as both “apostle” and “prophet”), advocate that believers burn or otherwise destroy art and religious scripture tied to every religious and philosophical belief system on Earth regarded as being in competition with Wagner’s New Apostolic Reformation — a maximally supremacist doctrine reminiscent of the 2001 Taliban dynamiting of Afghanistan’s UNESCO-designated Buddhas of Bamiyan.
The identity of the NAR’s alleged “apostles in the military,” mentioned by apostle Dutch Sheets at a 2008 New Apostolic Reformation conference in Texas, is mostly speculative but one is known for certain — the late Jim Ammerman, who ran a chaplain endorsing agency that is responsible for credentialing a substantial percentage of active-duty chaplains in the United States military.
A long-time apostle in one of the main apostolic bodies in C. Peter Wagner’s emerging New Apostolic Reformation, the International Coalition of Apostles, during the 1990s Jim Ammerman toured the United States telling audiences that Jewish bankers, in league with the anti-Christ, were plotting to enslave Americans under a military dictatorship enforced by United Nations, German, and Chinese troops hidden in U.S. national parks. According to Ammerman, then-President Bill Clinton, an agent of the Illuminati, would sign over American sovereignty to UN control, after which foreign troops would intern American citizens in prepared FEMA concentration camps.
In 2008, the official newsletter of Jim Ammerman’s chaplain endorsing agency carried an op-ed calling for the execution of Democratic Party Senators Dodd, Biden, Clinton, and Obama, for the alleged crime of opposing legislation to make English the official language of the United States.
Ammerman’s conspiracy theories were echoed in a 2009 video from Morningstar Ministries’ Oak initiative, a Tea Party-aligned political organizing initiative which features the participation of Christianity Todayboard member Samuel Rodriguez, who at a 2009 Oak Initiative conference called for the creation of a Christian “Tea Party.”
In 2010, the Oak Initiative released a video statement from former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense William “Jerry” Boykin, who claimed that Barack Obama’s health care reform legislation contained a provision to create a private “constabulary force, a force that can control the population.” Warned Boykin,
Remember, Hitler had the Brownshirts… if you read the healthcare legislation, it’s actually in the healthcare legislation. There are paragraphs in the healthcare legislation that talk about the commissioning of officers, i time of a national crisis, to work directly for the president. It’s laying the groundwork for a constabulary force that will control the population in America.
But in his September 30, 2013 “Prophetic Perspectives” series broadcast, Morningstar Ministries head Rick Joyner called for a military coup that would do just that — ‘control the population’, and Joyner’s 2007 “prophecy” indicates that Joyner’s vision for such a military dictatorship would be as coercive as the “constabulary force” Boykin warned of. Declared Joyner,
I mean, there’s no way our Republic can last much longer. It may not last through Obama’s second term. There are a lot of people that feel, you know, it can’t. There are forces right now seeking to undermine and to destroy the Republic. There’s almost a glib and almost a joyful disregard of the constitution, and a belittling of the constitution. We can’t make it without that — that’s our foundation, our moorings. We’re heading for serious tyranny.
[…]
I think we’ve been used in some wonderful and powerful ways by God, we’ve been one of the most generous nations in history, we’ve done so much good — and that’s why I appeal to the Lord — don’t let us be totally destroyed. Please, raise up those who will save us. And as I start telling friends from a long time that no election’s going to get the right person in there that can restore us because the system is so broken, so undermined right now — the whole system.
I believe our only hope is a military takeover: martial law.
**********************
Both Morningstar Ministries head Rick Joyner, NAR guru C. Peter Wagner, NAR apostle Dutch Sheets, NAR prophet Lou Engle of TheCall, and the late Campus Crusade For Christ founder and head Bill Bright are among the endorsers of the Kansas City-based International House of Prayer, which is at the narrative center of the soon to be premiering video documentary God Loves Uganda, that examines the role of American charismatic evangelicals in a mounting crusade of anti-gay hatred in the Africa nation of Uganda — where legislation that would make active homosexuality a capital crime has loomed before Uganda’s parliament since 2009.
The United States is a purely secular country and was founded on the ideal that government should be completely separated from any religious sect. The term “separation of church and state”—a quote from Thomas Jefferson—is the most common label for the freedom of religion guaranteed by the 1st Amendment of the constitution. Unfortunately, many modern citizens and elected officials have begun to twist the ideal of the 1st Amendment to facilitate religious discrimination and the imposition of religious laws over non-believers.
The first sentence of the 1st Amendment reads as such:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
—1st Amendment of the Constitution—
The 1st Amendment establishes a double-edged separation of church and state; one side of this separation prevents religion from taking control over the government, while the other side prevents government from interfering…
In this, the last post in this series, I had planned to take Mr. Mourdock’s position to its logical extreme (as distasteful as it is to me) as follows:
If it was God’s will for a woman who was raped to become pregnant (this was the gist of Mr. Mourdock’s original statement) then
It follows that it was God’s will for the woman to be raped then
It follows that the rapist was doing God’s will so it does not seem fair that they should be punished (hey they were only doing God’s will)
I was planning to do this to show the ABSURDITY of the original statement but I have decided it is a waste my time because none of the people that are supporting Mr. Mourdock (the ones that I would be trying to influence) would be able to follow any logical train of thought.
So let’s end it this way. Mitt Romney selected Richard Mourdock as the only Senate Candidate that he made an ad for. When Mr. Mourdock made his outrageous statement, Mitt continued to back him and did not pull his ad. I think about this says more about Mitt Romney than Mr. Mourdock’s statement says about him. Think about this if you are even considering a vote for Mitt.
Postscript:
I am so glad this series of posts is over. Writing about people like Mr. Mourdock makes me so angry that I can barely contain myself. I look forward to celebrating his defeat on Tuesday (along with the defeat of his best buddy Mitt Romney).
As it turns out, Mitt Romney isn’t the only friend of Richard “Rape Is God’s Will”. Even though Mitt is his biggest supporter (having not pulled the ad that he made for Richard “Rape Is God’s Will” Mourdock) the whole Republican Party is lining up behind him to save him from himself. As I have pointed out before the “Rape Issue” is a systemic issue across the Republican Party and not isolated to a few isolated kooks like Todd Akins and Richard “Rape Is God’s Will” Mourdock.
To learn more about how the whole Republican Party is lining up to support Richard “Rape Is God’s Will” Mourdock, read the following article from Portico.com.
Stay tuned tomorrow for the final post in this series before the election. in that post we will explore what “Rape Is God’s Will” implies if you think about it a little deeper. Trust me, it is pretty troubling.
GOP spends big to save Richard Mourdock
By: Manu Raju
November 1, 2012 06:25 PM EDT
Republicans are spending big to salvage Richard Mourdock’s candidacy in the aftermath of his comments on rape and pregnancy that have imperiled GOP hopes of taking back the Senate majority.About $4 million is being spent across the airwaves in the final week of the campaign to bolster Mourdock, from the likes of well-known Republican groups like American Crossroads, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Club for Growth. And that comes as both sides acknowledge that Mourdock has taken a hit in the polls since his comments. Democrats are now more confident than ever that their candidate, Rep. Joe Donnelly, is poised to pull off one of the biggest upsets of the cycle.
Unlike the Todd Akin situation, the influx of outside money shows how quickly Republicans nationally have rallied behind Mourdock after he roiled the political world by saying God intended for pregnancies to occur from rape. Facing a steep climb to net the four seats needed to win the majority — or three if Mitt Romney wins the White House — Republicans must hold the Indiana seat, which had been occupied by veteran Sen. Richard Lugar since 1977 until Mourdock won the GOP primary earlier this year.
“It’s a coin flip,” one Republican involved in the race acknowledged.
Sensing fresh opportunity, Democrats have hardly been sitting on their wallets. Outside groups — including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Majority PAC — are spending about $3 million in the campaign’s final week to boost Donnelly, a three-term congressman from South Bend. And with Republicans poised to make gains up-and-down the ticket in the state, Indiana Democratic candidates from governor down to the House are trying to tie Mourdock’s growing unpopularity to their opponents in the final push for voters.
“Richard Mourdock shocked and embarrassed Hoosiers,” said Dan Parker, the Indiana Democratic Party chairman. “It’s no wonder he’s become toxic on the campaign trail.”
Democrats circulated a poll Wednesday that showed a 9-point uptick in Mourdock’s unfavorability rating, with 49 percent of Hoosier voters holding a negative view of the state treasurer. It also found Donnelly up 7 points in a three-way race that also includes Libertarian candidate Andrew Horning, a stark reversal in a race long seen as a sure GOP win.
But Brose McVey, a senior official at the Mourdock campaign, dismissed the Donnelly poll, calling it “out of whack” with all the other polls that showed the race was “roughly tied.”
“Yes we’ve got an increase in unfavorable, but we’ve seen improvement in that in recent days,” McVey said. “We’re very, very pleased with the numbers we’re getting lately. We sense a little bit of a nice trend line forming since about Sunday. To be honest with you, we know we’re going to have a favorable turnout.”
Republicans believe Mourdock will ride the coattails of Mitt Romney and GOP Rep. Mike Pence, who is running for governor. And they note that there’s been a sharp decrease in the early vote in the Democratic stronghold of Indianapolis, which may bode well for the embattled GOP candidate.
Still, there’s no dispute that Mourdock’s rocky 10 days has made the race much tighter than Republicans had anticipated in a state President Barack Obama has effectively conceded. Both sides are now eagerly awaiting a non-partisan Howey-DePauw Battleground Poll to be released Friday.
In the interim, Democrats believe Mourdock remains a major drag to Republicans throughout Indiana. The Democratic gubernatorial candidate, John Gregg, and an outside group have released campaign ads likening Mourdock’s hard-edged politics to Pence, the favorite in the governor’s race. And Gregg’s campaign claims it has cut into Pence’s double-digit lead and narrowed it to within 3 points in the aftermath of the Mourdock fallout.
“Now Richard Mourdock says pregnancy from rape is ‘something God intended,” said an ad from a Democratic-allied outside group called Believe in Indiana. “He’s just like Mike Pence.”
It’s little surprise that Democrats are training their fire on Mourdock. Internal Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee polls conducted in late September in Donnelly’s House district found just 32 percent of voters viewed the Republican favorably. Fresher polling even before the rape comments found Mourdock’s unfavorability numbers growing to 40 percent, according to a Democratic campaign operative.
The GOP candidate in that district, Jackie Walorski, has faced an attack ad from the Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC, calling her a “tea party extremist just like Richard Mourdock.”
Republicans dismissed the attacks.
“Jackie Walorski is an independent voice for Hoosiers and anybody that wants to paint a different picture is wasting their time,” said Katie Prill, spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
In a recent interview, Mourdock cited the negative attacks as a prime reason for the Senate race being so tight, calling himself a “punching bag” for Democrats.
But Republicans have punched back at Donnelly, trying to undercut his efforts to sell himself as a bipartisan moderate. Including $500,000 spent by Mourdock, about $4.1 million in ads are reserved from Oct. 30-Nov. 6 to bolster the GOP candidate. Of that total, about $1.5 million is from Crossroads and $1.4 million from the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Groups tied to Sen. Rand Paul and the billionaire Joe Ricketts are also engaged in the race.
“What would a vote for Joe Donnelly really mean?” said a 30-second ad by the Club for Growth. “It would mean a U.S. Senate controlled by liberals.”
Do you believe in Karma? I do……and now even more so.
Richard “Rape is God’s will” Mourdock, and his biggest supporter Mitt Romney appear to have jointly eliminated any hope the Republicans have of capturing a majority in the Senate.
Mitt could have done the right thing.
Mitt could have rejected the religious extremist view of Richard “Rape is God’s will” Mourdock and withdrawn his support.
Mitt could have cut his losses and admitted that he made made a mistake but Mitt has proven that he is not that kind of guy which is quite troubling.
Ask yourself…..is this the kind of man I want running the United States.
Think about Mitt and his best buddy Bibi and ask yourself when (notice I didn’t say if) they get us involved in a major war in the Middle East will Mitt do the right thing once it is clear it is a mistake. Will he admit it and get us out or will he follow the same strategy he followed with his support for Richard “Rape is God’s will” Mourdock and double down no matter what the cost in American lives. Are you willing to take that chance? I can tell you that I’m not…….
IF there is a God I am pretty sure that he does not cause women to be be raped no matter what Richard “Rape is God’s will” Mourdock says. IF there is a God I imagine that he is somewhere laughing his/her ass off as he manipulates the electorate to make sure that Mitt and his best buddy Richard “Rape is God’s will” Mourdock go down in flames with the rest of the Republican Party.
If you are interested in the polling numbers that caused me to write this post, take a look at the following article from Huffington Post.
Two new independent polls of the Indiana Senate race show Richard Mourdock (R) losing significant ground to his opponent, Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), in the wake of his statement claiming that pregnancies from rape are “something God intended to happen.”
A Howey/DePauw University Battleground poll released Friday morning found Donnelly leading Mourdock 47 percent to 36 percent, up from a 2 point lead in September. Meanwhile, a new automated Rasmussen poll found Donnelly leading Mourdock by 3 points, up from a 5 point deficit just three weeks earlier.
Donnelly now leads Mourdock by 3.5 points in the HuffPost Pollster estimate, which is based on all available public polling, including internal polls from Mourdock’s campaign that continue to show him with a narrow lead.
With all partisan polls filtered out of that estimate, Donnelly’s lead expands to 5 points. HuffPost Pollster has officially shifted the rating of this race from “tossup” to “leaning Democratic.”
If Donnelly goes on to win in Indiana, the Republicans’ chances of winning a majority in the Senate are very low, as indicated by HuffPost Pollster Senate Outlook. Assuming that independent former Gov. Angus King of Maine — who continues to lead in the polls — caucuses with Democrats as expected, Republicans would need to win eight more competitive races to get to 50 seats, which would amount to a majority if Mitt Romney wins the presidency, with Paul Ryan casting the tie-breaking vote as vice president.
The Senate races in Nebraska, Nevada, Arizona, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Virginia, Montana and Massachusetts present them with their best opportunity to reach that number. However, Democratic candidates currently lead in five of those eight races, according to the most recent HuffPost Pollster estimates.
The GOP’s more unlikely prospects lie in Senate races such as those in Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Florida, all of which feature Democratic candidates leading by at least 5 points.
However, if the Democrats manage to win all six races currently rated as “tossups” and all of the seats “leaning” their way, they could actually expand their majority by as many as four seats.
Here are the significant developments in other Senate races since Monday.
Elizabeth Warren (D) got a strong result from a new Suffolk University poll in Massachusetts, which shows her leading Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) by 7 points, with only 1 percent of voters still undecided. Meanwhile, Republican-leaning Kimball Political Consulting found Brown ahead by 2 points. The two candidates agreed to cancel their final debate, scheduled for Oct. 30, due to damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, and Brown refused to reschedule the debate for Thursday. With no other major public events scheduled between now and Election Day, the focus turns to the two campaigns’ highly touted turnout operations, especially in the aftermath of the storm. Warren currently leads Brown by 4.2 points in the HuffPost Pollster estimate and this race is still rated as “leaning Democratic.”
Former Gov. Tommy Thompson (R) has pulled nearly even with Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) in the open Wisconsin Senate race, according to recent polls. Baldwin’s lead has shrunk to just 1 point in the current HuffPost Pollster estimate, and this race rating has shifted from “leaning Democratic” to “tossup.” Of the five polls taken of both the state’s presidential and Senate races over the last week, Thompson has outperformed Mitt Romney by an average of exactly 5 points. If Romney even comes within a few points of winning Wisconsin, it significantly boosts Thompson’s chances. If Romney wins the state, it’s hard to see how Thompson loses.
Polls also show the open Virginia Senate race as having tightened over the past few weeks. Former Gov. Tim Kaine (D) now leads former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) by1.4 points in the HuffPost Pollster estimate, but his fate now appears to be tied to President Barack Obama’s performance, who currently leads Romney by a similarly slim margin in the state.
The Senate race in Montana continues to be one of the closest races in the country. Since September, neither Sen. Jon Tester (D) nor Rep. Denny Rehberg (R) has led by more than a 3 point margin in any publicly released poll. This past week, two independent polls, from Pharos Research Group and Rasmussen, both found Tester leading Rehberg by just 1 point. Tester holds a statistically insignificant 1.9 point lead in the current HuffPost Pollster estimate of the race.
While former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D) saw some encouraging polling numbers last week in Nebraska, a new automated We Ask America poll found him trailing state Sen. Deb Fischer (R) by 13 points — similar to the margins she enjoyed over the summer. Since this race has been so sparsely polled, this result was enough to shift Fischer’s advantage up to 10 points in the HuffPost Pollster estimate and keep this race rated as “strong Republican.”
HuffPost Pollster rates a race as a “tossup” if the polling margin separating two candidates is less than 3 percentage points in the Pollster estimate and there have been at least five polls in that state in the last three weeks. A race is designated as “leaning” toward one party if a candidate is leading by 3 to 6 percentage points in that estimate. If a candidate is leading by more than 6 percentage points, it is rated as “strong” Democrat or Republican.
If there have been fewer than five polls in the last three weeks in any given race, composite ratings are used from three respected election handicappers: the Cook Political Report, the Rothenberg Political Report and Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
Here is a greatest hits from Richard Mourdock, and by association, from his biggest supporter Mitt Romney. Mitt still stands behind this man’s campaign for the US Senate…..Is this really what you want as your next President?
Here is a great post from liberalvaluesblog.com to make my closing argument on this Republican Commandment. The post is based on comments made during the Republican primaries.
I have made it a point to try to keep religion out of political posts on this blog. I don’t care about anyone’s religion, including Mitt Romney’s! Religious freedom is why this country was founded and I ask you to think about that as you read the article below.
Santorum Upset That Obama Agenda Not Based On Bible
February 19, 2012 — Ron Chusid
In a post yesterday I contrasted the false conservative narrative that liberals support a big government to impose their views upon others with the actual fact that a large segment of the conservative movement actually does see the role of government as imposing their religious views on the country. Rick Santorum repeatedly demonstrates this, doing so again yesterday in attacking Obama for having an agenda which is not “based on Bible.”
Newt Gingrich has made similar arguments with his attacks on Obama as a “secular socialist.” (Besides being wrong in seeing secular as undesirable, he is wrong in calling Obama a socialist. Gingrich is using the new conservative definition of socialism as supporting a few percentage point increase in the marginal tax rate of multimillionaires and lower tax rates on the middle class, which has nothing to do with any conventional definition of the term.) Ron Paul has also shown a preference for theocracy, while Mitt Romney is willing to take multiple positions on the issue.
Contrast Santorum and Gingrich with a previous Catholic candidate for president, John F. Kennedy:
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish, where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
John Kennedy and Barack Obama are both following in the tradition of the Founding Fathers who understood the importance of creating a secular republic with separation of church and state. Nobody should be able to use the powers of government to impose their religious views upon others.
John Koster, a Republican congressional candidate in Washington state, said Sunday that “the rape thing” is not a good enough reason for a woman to have an abortion,the Associated Press reported.
Asked at a campaign fundraiser whether he supports abortion rights in some situations, Koster replied that he only supports abortion in cases where a woman’s life is in danger.
“Incest is so rare, I mean, it’s so rare,” he said. “But the rape thing– you know, I know a woman who was raped and kept the child, gave it up for adoption, and she doesn’t regret it.”
He added, “On the rape thing, it’s like, how does putting more violence onto a woman’s body and taking the life of an innocent child that’s a consequence of this crime — how does that make it better? You know what I mean?”
His Democratic opponent, Suzan DelBene, supports abortion rights. Her campaign criticized Koster for trivializing rape.
“Dismissing it as a ‘thing’ is an awfully casual way for him to talk about it, and I think it highlights how little he understands the ramifications and the seriousness of the issue. So that’s very problematic,” DelBene spokesperson Viet Shelton told TPM. “And the way he approaches the issue and the policy conclusions he comes to, it just highlights the serious problem we have when politicians are trying to dictate women’s health care decisions.”
In response to the controversy over his comments, Koster campaign manager Larry Stickney told the AP that Koster clearly takes rape seriously because he has strongly advocated cracking down on sex offenders.
Republican lawmakers and congressional candidates have made headlines several times over the past few months for their comments about rape and abortion. Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said that pregnancy from rape is “something God intended,” Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) said victims of “legitimate rape” almost never become pregnant, and Rep. Tom Smith (R-Pa.) compared pregnancy as a result of rape to “having a baby out of wedlock.”
Mitt is still supporting his buddy Richard “rape is God’s will” Mourdock.
Have you decided how you feel about this?
Have you decided whether when a woman gets raped she should be forced to have the baby?
Here is a great article from Huffington Post about how the majority of the Americans feel about that topic. See which side you are on?
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Abortion Poll:
Vast Majority Support Legal Abortion
For Rape Victims
The vast majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal in cases of rape or incest and when the life or health of the mother is at risk, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll. That finding puts most Americans at odds with the 13 Republican Senate candidates who have said they support making abortion illegal in all cases.
According to the survey, at least 70 percent of respondents support keeping abortion legal for all of the three scenarios. In the individual cases, 74 percent said abortion should be legal in cases where the mother’s life is endangered by pregnancy, 70 percent said it should be legal when the mother’s health is endangered, and 74 percent said it should be legal when a woman becomes pregnant as a result of rape or incest. No more than 14 percent of respondents said that abortion should be illegal in all cases.
Those findings are similar to those of a CNN survey conducted in August, which found even higher percentages saying abortion should be legal in cases when a woman’s life was in danger (88 percent), when her health was in danger (83 percent) or when she was a victim of rape or incest (83 percent). A higher percentage of respondents to the HuffPost/YouGov poll said they were not sure, and similarly small percentage of respondents to the CNN polls said abortion should be illegal in all cases.
In the HuffPost/YouGov poll, a separate sampling found 27 percent of respondents said they believe abortion should be legal in all circumstances, 22 percent said that it should generally be legal but with some restrictions, and 30 percent said it should be illegal except in special circumstances. Fifteen percent said it should always be illegal — similar to the percentage who said abortion should be illegal even when a woman’s life or health was in danger or when she was the victim of rape or incest.
Women in the sample which asked the more general question were more likely than men to say that abortion should be legal in most or all cases — 52 percent for women versus 44 percent for men. But women asked the three questions about abortion in certain cases were less likely than men to say that abortion should be legal in those cases.
Because these questions were asked of different sets of respondents, this discrepancy could be a result of variation between the two samples, or it could be that women who oppose abortion are less likely than men to support exceptions. Women in the sample asked the more general question were more likely than men to believe abortion should be legal in all cases, but only by a one percentage point margin, which is not a large enough margin to say with certainty that this would be true of the general population, because of sampling error.
Respondents to the poll were also more likely to oppose another key aspect of social conservatives’ agenda: defunding Planned Parenthood. A 48 percent to 32 percent plurality of respondents opposed cutting federal government funding for Planned Parenthood clinics. Female respondents were more likely to oppose cutting off Planned Parenthood funding by a 27 percentage point margin, whereas for men the margin was only 5 percentage points. The survey found that more than a quarter of women (28 percent) and 10 percent of men say they’ve visited a Planned Parenthood clinic personally for health care services.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll was conducted from Oct. 26-28 among 2,000 U.S. adults using a sample drawn from YouGov’s opt-in online panel that was selected to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population. Factors considered include age, race, gender, education, employment, income, marital status, number of children, voter registration, time and location of Internet access, interest in politics, religion, and church attendance. The margin of error for the complete sample was 2.8 percentage points.
The questions about legality of abortion were each asked of half the sample: 999 respondents in sample A saw the question about whether abortion should generally be legal, and 1,001 respondents in sample B saw the three questions about whether abortion should be legal under specific circumstances.