religion

It Is My Moral Duty: Day XX In The Life Of This Candidate For United States Congress.

By in Politics, Religion Tags: ,

This is a sad and pathetic story. I don’t like writing about this stuff. But I must.

Roy Moore, running for Senator as an Alabama Republican, now has 5 women who have accused him of sexual abuse.

Over the past week, virtually every major Republican voice has called on Moore to step down. Yesterday, Sean Hannity of FOX News said, “You must remove any doubt. If he can’t do this, then Judge Moore needs to get out of this race.”

One Republican leader has been mysteriously silent: President Trump.

The problem for Trump is the thorny logic. Moore has 5 credible female accusers. He calls them all liars. And yet, Moore is receiving increased pressure to step down. Donald Trump has 16 credible female accusers. He calls them all liars, too. But he seems to have no inclination to step down.

Why?

Trump once told reporters of his accusers, “All I can say is it’s totally fake news. It’s just fake. It’s fake. It’s made-up stuff, and it’s disgraceful, what happens, but that happens in the — that happens in the world of politics.”

The “pink elephant” in the room here is glaringly apparent and it begs a host of questions.

Why the double standard?

Are Moore’s accusers credible, and Trump’s not?

Do you get a pass when you are President? (Well, no — Bill Clinton didn’t.)

On what moral basis can Sean Hannity offer Moore such an ultimatum, but not ask one of Trump?

Are Trump’s accusers, by virtue of the fact that Trump is President, less believable?

And if Trump joins the chorus of influential GOP leaders calling on Roy Moore to step aside, how will he and his supporters defend calling his 16 accusers “liars?”

Some Republicans get mad at me for “speaking against your own party.” But right is right. Wrong is wrong. I’m no typical political yes-man.

Perhaps it’s political suicide for me to bring stuff like this up, but I’m a candidate who will always speak from my heart, and tell the truth, even if it “hurts” me politically.

It’s my moral duty as a husband, father, brother, friend, and candidate for the United States House of Representatives to defend the defenseless — in this case, women.

We can do better. Please visit my campaign page by clicking HERE and supporting a new kind of Republican!

Announcing the WhyPartisan Podcast!

By in Politics Tags: ,

Almost two years ago, me and my friend Kristen Howerton of Rage Against The Minivan decided we would sit down every few weeks, and talk about the presidential election. We would chat live her on Facebook

We wanted to talk about the stuff that matters to all of us. We wanted to converse in everyday language because politics can sometimes be confusing.

Mostly, we wanted to model what it looks like to have a civil conversation — between her the Democrat, and me, the Republican.

With partisanship at an all-time high. we started to ask ourselves, “Why should people be SO partisan?” Especially since most people really, at heart, want the exact same things!

We asked ourselves, “Why Partisan?”

So now you can now listen to our discussion, WhyPartisan, as a Podcast!

Please give it a try and subscribe on iTunes or Android by clicking HERE.

 

I Guess Abortion Is Murder, Unless Your Mistress Is Pregnant.

By in Politics, Religion Tags: ,


 

If the United States Congress was a restaurant, we’d never eat there.

That’s because Congress has a whopping national approval rating today of SIXTEEN PERCENT according to Gallup. If we gave Congress stars like they do on Yelp, they would have ALMOST one star out of five.

Almost.

I think the biggest problem is these career politicians, like Depraved Dana Rohrabacher, who recently said about Charlottesville, “It’s all baloney.” (Tell that to the family of Heather Heyer, Dana.)

In other news, a Pennsylvania Congressman named Tim Murphy resigned today. He had been in the swamp for 15 years. He happened to be pro-life and an anti-abortion lawyer.

But, Mr. Murphy just got caught with his, er, pants down — he decided to text his mistress, a psychologist half his age, telling her to… get an abortion. He thought she was pregnant. It turned out she wasn’t. Party leaders found out and made it clear that his scandal was making the party look bad.

I guess they are fighting to keep their approval rating in the double digits.

Murphy is married with one child.

Republicans, I mean this from my heart, we have to do better. Yes, there are some good Congressmen and Congresswomen on both sides. But when an anti-abortion Congressman tells his mistress she needs to get an abortion, Republicans, we have yet another reason to drain the swamp

These kinds of Rohrabacher and Murphy career politicians are really making us look bad.

We can do better.

We Can Do Better: My Journal On Politics in America

By in Politics, Religion Tags: ,

Over 50 dead. Over 400 injured. Yet another senseless mass shooting in America.

Every mother and father, I humbly ask you to hear me out. And those who are not parents, this is for you, too.

Sometimes prayer and grieving and “Not being political” isn’t enough.

Saying “Our prayers are with Las Vegas” can be the equivalent of boasting of your prayers as you watching a toddler drown before your eyes.

That might sound harsh.

But hear me out.

Faith without works is dead. Talk is cheap. We all know this.

Spiritual platitudes can sometimes be a cop-out.

To my Christian friends, Jesus didn’t merely pray. When necessary, he pulled out the whips, yelled, called oppressors names — especially when it meant standing up for the innocent.

I am a gun owner, have been my entire life, and believe in the right to bear arms.

But, fellow Republicans, before you throw me under the bus for being political or “liberal” or angry, THINK with me.

On an average day, 93 Americans are killed with guns.

That means around 12,000 gun homicides each year.

Seven children and teens are killed by guns in the US on an average day.

In an average month, 50 women are shot to death by intimate partners in the United States.

America’s gun homicide rate is more than 25 TIMES the average of other developed countries.

Hear me out, especially fellow Republicans. These aren’t just numbers, they are the children of parents like you and me.

The National Rifle Association spent over $30 million on the campaigns of Trump and Rohrabacher.

Why do these actions of the NRA and extreme right-wing Republicans matter?

Because the NRA opposes ALL gun safety laws, including background checks. They spend their lobbying efforts in the swamp of Washington DC, bribing career politicians to fight any kind of gun control.

Corrupt Dana Rohrbacher, Congressman of California’s 48th district, for example, voted YES on DECREASING the gun waiting period from three days to one day. Yes, you read that correctly.

In Trump’s speech today about yet another mass shooting, he did not say ONE WORD about gun violence. Nothing.

Why would he?

Friends, gun safety is not a left versus right issue. Far right-wing Republicans who have lost any sense of common sense have made it one, and many of them know that their elections are largely funded by the enormous financial contributions of the NRA.

Conservatism, in my view, has always been about being rational, disciplined, cautious. Conservatism means you speak honestly, even if it “hurts” your party.

We need to become a party of common sense, courage, and empathy.

So, yes, pray and grieve.

Then call your congressman if you are Republican. Tell him or her you are over enabling this kind of violence.

In the next election, find a candidate that has the courage and common sense to do what’s right, as opposed to merely going with the flow of the status quo.

Because the status quo is killing people today, and all the prayers and grieving with respect to violence isn’t working; it’s only getting worse.

We can do better.

For the sake of all these victims of gun violence, we must.

 

Never Forget 9/11. But Please Never Forget These Things, Either.

By in Politics, Religion Tags: ,

 

To burn or to jump three football fields down.

That was the choice of countless innocent fellow human beings had to make.

Today we mourn the 2,996, murdered on September 11, 2001.

Back in those days, there were no hashtags. Today, all over Twitter and Instagram, you see countless people using #neverforget.

We, none of us, should ever forget the evil of that day.

We should #neverforget the catastrophic devastation to the loved ones of the victims.

We should #neverforget the heroism of thousands, especially the first responders.

We should #neverforget how united virtually every country in the world was to find and destroy the bigoted and violent ideology of terrorist groups.

But there are some other things we should #neverforget.

We should #neverforget the 4,486 U.S. soldiers that died in Iraq.

We should #neverforget the roughly 500,000 innocent Iraqi citizens who died because of our invasion.

We should #neverforget that the war in Iraq was not against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks: Osama Bin Laden, and Al Queda.

We should #neverforget that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, the premise given to justify the war.

We should #neverforget the babies born grotesquely deformed, with no heads, two heads, a single eye in their foreheads, scaly bodies or missing limbs, or those experiencing hideous cancers and leukemias, due to the depleted Uranium that used by the American military.

We should #neverforget that the war in Iraq created The Islamic State (ISIS).

We should #neverforget the rape and murder of Syrian and Kurdish and Iraqi women and children, do to ISIS.

We should #neverforget the 31,000 innocent lives — most being peace-loving Muslims — who have died at the hand of ISIS terrorist attacks, or the over 41,000 injured.

We should #neverforeget that ethnic cleansing happens, and is happening to Muslims in Myanmar.

We #shouldnever forget that the demonization of religious and racial minorities to stoke fear and hatred from the majority is nothing new, and is the precise method used by fascists like Adolph Hitler

We should #neverforget the ideology of White Supremacy, not only in far away countries but right here in the U.S.A.

We should #neverforget the genocide done to dark skinned Native American “savages” at the hands of white Puritan settlers, in the name of Christianity.

We should #neverforget the countless Africans brought here by white settlers to work as slaves, and decade after decade of their abuse and torture, merely because of the color of their skin.

We should #neverforget that millions of people of color (whether black, Mexican, Muslim, or other) are afraid today because white supremacy is gathering momentum, and is more fervent and organized than it’s been in over 50 years.

We should #neverforget that millions of white, non-Jewish, heterosexuals in 1930’s Germany believed white supremacy and anti-Semitism and homophobia were exaggerated my minorities.

We should #neverforget that the majority of them identified as “Christian.”

We should #neverforget that people of color in the U.S. are charged and arrested at a rate of 6 to 9 times that of white people.

We should #neverforget that every day, 88 Americans are killed with guns, that the gun homicide rate in the U.S. is 20 times higher than other developed nations, and that there have been more Americans killed with firearms in the first 15 years of the 21st century than there were U.S. combat deaths in all the wars of the 20th century combined.

We should #neverforget that of the 7 countries listed on President Trump’s current travel ban, no deaths on U.S soil occurred as a result of refugees.

We should #neverforget that 15 of the 19 terrorists of September 11 were citizens of Saudi Arabia, and the others were from the United Arab Emirates (2), Egypt, and Lebanon.

We should #neverforget that neither Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt nor Lebanon are part of President Trump’s travel ban.

We should #neverforget that Islamaphobia is worse today than it was in the years after September 11, 2001.

We should #neverforget that President Richard Nixon said, “People react more to fear than to love…”

We should #neverforget that countless white nationalist, neo-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan and alt-right websites and Twitter accounts exist and that they inform, train and recruit millions of Americans toward ways to intimidate, harm and get rid of people of color, Jews, Muslims, homosexuals.

We should #neverforget that millions of Americans, especially white, male, Christians have never personally experienced a single incident of discrimination.

We should #neverforget that today it’s the white, non-Jewish, non-Muslim, non-Hispanic, non-black who fervently believe that racism and xenophobia are not a big deal, and are being perpetrated not by the bigots, but by the media.

I want to #neverforget these evils because of the countless people I have listened to, who are scared, who have been threatened, harassed and beaten because of their minority status.

I will #neverforget the words of my mentor, Jesus Christ — when he said, “Inasmuch you have done it for the least of these, you have done it unto me.”

I will #neverforget that the example Jesus left for his followers was not that of personal safety, but the safety of the outsiders of society.

I will #neverforget September 11, 2001, those who lost loved ones.

I will #neverforget that such heinous acts are always due to the worse kind evil: bigotry.

 

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