Koch Brothers and Quasi-religious Persecution?Is Predatory Capitalism the New Religion of the Right?

cross posted from Penigma.blogspot.com:

Prayer for Koch Industries, Is Capitalism the New Religion of the Religious Right?

I received this email from a friend who is an occasional reader, who noted that I had recently written about the apparent lack of intellectual honesty evidenced by the finding of the Koch/von Hayek correspondence here.  Also I had written about the Bloomberg News Report on Koch here.

Compared to say anyone on Fox News, or other right wing media, particularly of the Rupert Murdoch owned variety, or pundit entertainers like Rush Limbaugh, or the majority of the right wing blogosphere, Bloomberg does a competent job of being factual.  I have no doubt whatsoever that Bloomberg is going to proceed with extra care when going up against Koch Industries, who have 'deep pockets'.  The political right is notoriously litigious.

Not that Bloomberg is either a Democrat or a liberal; while he started out as a Democrat in the last millennium, he's been a Republican through most of the past decade, including his political career, before switching from being a Republican to an Independent in 2007.

So while the New York mayor and media mogul is not anywhere as far right as the Koch brothers (well, two out of three of them anyway), he is a fairly centrist individual with some respectable Republican credentials.

So it was with that in mind that I perused with great skepticism the following email (redacted to preserve the privacy of the sender) which I am assured did in fact come directly from the wife of a Koch employee rather than as a chain email:

Subject: Prayer for Koch persecution

Hello Sisters,      I'm writing to ask for an urgent prayer request.  We're doing fine, but Koch, the company we work for has need.  They have been ruthlessly persecuted over the past 2 years by the liberal media and followers of leftist ideologies.  Those people know they must somehow attack and discredit one of the most successful representations of the Free Market Enterprise that has made this country great.  There have been numerous articles and allegations of all sorts and tomorrow morning on ABC's Good Morning America, they'll be doing another "hatchet job".         These lies and misrepresentation can have strong repercussions.  Please pray that the viewers will see the truth and the obvious slant of the enemy.  And that they would "wake-up" to the destruction of our Liberties in the United States.          And please point anyone who needs to, to go to this website for Koch's side of the story:  www.kochfacts.com.            I so appreciate your prayers and any others you make for the continued upholding of our Nation's Freedoms and Liberties!      May God be Merciful,

Now I'm far more likely to be praying vigorously for a bit of Koch Industries PROSECUTION, rather than to save them from any perceived 'persecution'.

In my usual interest in fact checking, I have not only begun my own fact check effort, but also forwarded this on, including the linked page, to politifact.com, in the hopes they will take a whack at fact checking BOTH Bloomberg and the Koch Industries claims. 

Which, should they take up the challenge, I will of course post here.

I'm hoping I might tempt my mikeb co-blogger, Laci, into working with me, on my own efforts; because this might be beyond my own humble resources.  I'm hoping Laci's background might be uniquely suited to the international and legal aspects, but I also respect that his time is valuable and there are many other demands on it.

But most of all, I was struck by what amounts to a new religion that equates greed to god, and predatory capitalism to patriotism and representative democracy.  Beyond the specific challenges over fact are the extremely disturbing Libertarian leaning assumptions about economics, government, religion, and most of all, the presumption that other Americans who disagree with their extreme right wing positions ARE THE ENEMY.  That word was used specifically; the author of this email sees people like me, like Pen, like Laci as their ENEMY rather than simply people who differ from them.

The sheer intolerance of that, the paranoiac world view of that passage is deeply disturbing to me.  That it might very well derive, in the case of the email, from a misleading representation of the facts by Koch Industries is equally disturbing.

This represents a kind of political engagement that was new in the days of the so-called moral majority in the 90's - a group of people who were neither particularly moral, nor any kind of majority, and it has continued to evolve as the religious right during the 2000s.  And by evolve, what I really mean is to become more extreme and more intolerant and less reality based.  In other words, crazier than they were before.

So I am contemplating this fact check endeavor as a push-back against the intolerant, against the bogus religious associations of greed and God, and against the unwarranted paranoia of the right represented by this email.

 I'm tempted to begin with a prayer for the prosecution - and even for a little persecution to happen TO the Koch Brothers and Koch Industries, for my personal inspiration and as a touch of humor to the otherwise dry business of fact checking.

Cutting to the Chase

Circumcision is not exclusively a religious medical procedure; some people are in favor of it for hygiene preferences.  

Foreskins from circumcisions, as a medical procedure byproduct, are used as one of the primary sources for growing skin used in skin graft procedures, particularly for burn victims.  Each foreskin can produce up to 4 ACRES of grafting tissue.  

Opponents of the procedure believe it amounts to the sexual mutilation of male infants.

Yes? No? Should it be up to the parents, or should it be a procedure that is delayed until the child can express an opinion for himself (or.....herself)?  Does public health policy have a role to play in THIS decision?

Or.........is this an exclusively religious decision? Is a ban on circumcision anti-Semitic?  Is a similar ban on female circumcision - religiously intolerant? Or does it not equate?

From Reuters and Yahoo.com: 

California prevents ban on male circumcision

By Mary Slosson | Reuters – 3 hrs ago

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California Governor Jerry Brown announced on Sunday that he signed a bill preventing local authorities from banning the practice of male circumcision.

The bill, which takes effect immediately, comes in the wake of an
effort by a San Francisco group opposed to male circumcision to enforce a
city-wide ban of the practice in a November ballot measure.

That effort was struck down in late
July by a California judge who said it would infringe on religious
freedom. The measure was removed from the November ballot.

The measure, which garnered 12,000
signatures of support, would have made it a misdemeanor crime to
circumcise a boy before he is 18 years old in San Francisco, regardless of the parents' religious beliefs.

A dozen petitioners sued to block
the initiative at the time. A similar effort in Santa Monica, west of
Los Angeles, was withdrawn.

Circumcision is a ritual obligation
for infant Jewish boys and also a common rite among Muslims, who
account for the largest share of circumcised men worldwide.

The move to outlaw circumcision in San Francisco raised alarm bells for Jewish groups.

In June, the Anti-Defamation League
condemned a comic book created by supporters of the anti-circumcision
movement that it said contained grotesque anti-Semitic imagery. The
comic featured a character named "Monster Mohel" as an evil villain.

A mohel is a Jewish individual specifically trained to perform the ritual circumcision of infant boys.

(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst)

Guns and Kiddie Porn Figure in Recent Gun-Related Arrest

Thank goodness the staff of the store where the purchases were made wised up, after the last Fort Hood shooter (alleged) did his shopping there too.  I usually find that the local media tends to provide the best coverage of these stories.

from the Austin Texas Statesman:



By Jeremy Schwartz, Tony Plohetski and Miguel Liscano Updated: 6:33 a.m. Friday, July 29, 2011
Published: 10:08 p.m. Thursday, July 28, 2011

KILLEEN — An AWOL soldier fleeing child pornography charges was planning a potentially deadly attack on Fort Hood soldiers before he was arrested, investigators and officials said Thursday.
Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, who was most recently posted at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, was expected to face federal explosives charges after Killeen police found explosive materials and other weapons inside his room at a budget motel just blocks from Fort Hood, according to federal and local authorities.
Abdo planned to detonate bombs at a popular downtown Killeen restaurant and then shoot survivors, according to law enforcement documents first reported by ABC News and confirmed by a military official with knowledge of the investigation.
Abdo was arrested Wednesday on the pornography charge and for being AWOL after a tip from a suspicious clerk at the Guns Galore firearms shop. The clerk alerted police after Abdo on Tuesday bought six one-pound containers of smokeless gunpowder, three boxes of 12-gauge shotgun shells and a spare magazine for a semi-automatic handgun.
"His questions suggested he really didn't know what he was buying," said clerk Greg Ebert, a former police officer.
Guns Galore is the same store where Maj. Nidal Hasan purchased the gun, ammunition and laser sights that witnesses testified he used during the Nov. 5, 2009, shooting massacre at Fort Hood that left 13 dead.
After Abdo paid in cash and left in a taxi, Ebert said he called Killeen police and gave them a description of Abdo, who did not need to provide identification for the items he bought.
Officials said Abdo planned to use the items to kill military personnel. An article on "how to make a bomb in your kitchen" from the English-language al Qaeda magazine Inspire was among the items found in Abdo's motel room, a law enforcement official told The New York Times.
"I would classify it as a terror plot," Killeen Police Chief Dennis Baldwin said. "We would probably be here today giving you a different briefing if he had not been stopped."