Thune

So will the SD MSM wakeup and cover this story over the recess? Don’t hold your breath.

pacconf08_030

Ironic Johnny our teflon senator

As many in the National media have been covering the ‘C’ Street Mafia, including Rachel Maddow’s extensive coverage over the past couple of weeks, it seems the SD Media is asleep at the wheel. It is widely known that John Thune is either a member or a past member of the group, but no one in this state’s media seem to be concerned about it. Why? Good question. A couple of weeks ago I emailed KELO, KSFY and the Gargoyle Leader about the story and did speak with a Gargoyle journalist about it. Still no story. I guess the lingering question is pretty simple;

Senator Thune, do you still belong to the group, and if so, is it’s Christian Theocratic mission anti-democratic?

I don’t know what bothers me more, that Thune belongs to this group, or that the SD MSM is ignoring his association. Please, someone, anyone, ask the questions.

Soooo, Ironic Johnny thinks he is a big wheel now

From my email box (H/T – Helga);

Thune gave the republican radio address Saturday.
Thune kicks off August health battle in GOP address
Posted: 08/01/09 09:09 AM [ET]
The August recess battle over healthcare started early Saturday, with Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) arguing that Democratic proposals to reform healthcare “fall short” of what’s needed.

“Republicans want health care reform that works. Reform that brings down costs for families and small businesses, and reform that provides better care to more people,” Thune said in the weekly Republican radio address. “On all these points, the current proposals by the president and the Democrat leadership in Congress fall short.”

Thune, who is a potential 2012 presidential candidate, argued that the bills under consideration would only worsen healthcare costs for consumers in the long term, while adding to the national debt and reducing quality — rhetoric which has dominated GOP opposition to the legislation in recent weeks.

Thune touted Republican proposals, such as limiting medical malpractice lawsuits, encouraging preventative medicine, and allowing small businesses to pool toegther to provide insurance, as examples of a “better way” to reform healthcare.

“These and other commonsense solutions would provide real reform for our health care system rather than the dangerous and costly experiment that Democrats are proposing,” Thune said. “It’s time for real reform that works, not the same old answers of more money and more government.”

While I do agree with some things John is saying, I know he doesn’t want those changes to help us, but to help the status quo. While I agree that some rewards in medical malpractice are high, I do believe people deserve the right to sue. If a doctor maimed you due to malpractice, how would you feel. I think we know. I also agree with preventative care, but that will only come if people have good insurance, like John Thune does. Which is the irony of this whole debate. It seems socialized medicine is good enough for our vets and armed services, seniors and members of Congress, but not good enough for the rest of us. I have often said that Republicans who oppose reform should release their free medical care and get private insurance like the rest of us. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. In fact a congressman that is promoting healthcare reform introduced a bill last week that would eliminate medicare, he basically was being cynical about the debate, and asking Republicans, “If you are so against socialized medicine, then vote to get rid of it.” Of course, not too many Republicans supported the bill, go figure. As for Thune’s suggestion that we co-op insurance, we have been doing that, with group plans, I am a part of one on my own. Trust me, my premiums keep going up and up, monopolies don’t work, competition does.

UPDATE: More of Thune’s ‘C’ Street Lunacy, circa 2005 – H/T Helga

Here are some interviews from 2005 where Thune is talking about the ‘C’ Street Mafia. I don’t have time to add commentary, I am still laughing my ass off.

Jesus plus nothing:

Undercover among America’s secret theocrats

By Jeff Sharlet

The Education of Senator Thune
22 February 2005
Sharlet: Daschle defeater John Thune cites spiritual influence of a man who cites spiritual model of Osama Bin Laden. In this Q&A Christianity Today conducted with Senator Thune (R, SD), he says that the “C Street ministry” of Doug Coe helped keep him on the Christian path when he was a Representative. As it happens, I’ve witnessed that “ministry”; here’s what I wrote about it in Harper’s: “The day I worked at C Street I ran into Doug Coe, who was tutoring Todd Tiahrt, a Republican congressman from Kansas…. ‘We gotta take Jesus out of the religious wrapping,’ [Coe said.] ‘All right, how do we do that?’ Tiahrt asked. ‘A covenant,’ Doug answered…. ‘Like the Mafia,’ Doug clarified. ‘Look at the strength of their bonds.” He made a fist and held it before Tiahrt’s face…. Coe listed other men who had changed the world through the strength of the covenants they had forged with their ‘brothers’: ‘Look at Hitler,’ he said. ‘Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Bin Laden.'”
Interview with Thune 2005

Do you find fellowship with other legislators?

I do. There are several different Bible study groups on Capitol Hill. I’ve not had an opportunity yet in the Senate to really get immersed. But when I was a member of the House, there were a couple of organizations, one called Christian Embassy that is affiliated with Campus Crusade for Christ whose mission it is to reach out and reach and disciple people in the legislative branch, the executive branch, and in the military at the Pentagon. And also the C Street ministry, which initially came from Doug Coe. Coe was influential at Chuck Colson’s conversion too. But those are a couple of ministries that are active out there. And there are other members of Congress who come to those events. There are a number who are very serious about their faith. I do have a chance to interact with them.

In the campaign, you sharply criticized those who blocked the President’s judicial nominations. What’s ahead?

To shut off a filibuster, you have to have 60 votes in the Senate. We still don’t have 60 votes. But we have new leadership on the Democratic side. I hope members of the Senate who previously had been held hostage to their party’s leadership will now feel more freedom to vote their conscience. I don’t know, maybe they did. But it seems to me that some of these guys who represent states that are more conservative than their national party, might now be thinking twice and might be more inclined to support not only legislation but also judicial nominations that are more in line with their state’s interest and their state’s fundamental beliefs and values.

Skipping back to foreign policy, why might Christians have a special interest in seeing democracy spread in the Middle East?

Christians obviously want to see people come to the Christian faith, but they want to see people have the choice to be able to choose. Religious freedom, political freedom, political liberty, and economic freedom all tend to go hand in hand. Liberating Iraq from decades of tyranny and dictatorship, bringing about political freedom, will create an atmosphere of where religious freedom will come to Iraq. And that opens the door, obviously, for the Christian faith there as well.

Christians look around the world and want to see people who are in a position to be able to make decisions, to have the freedoms that we enjoy in this country. That is, like the President says, our birthright. Our Declaration of Independence, our Founding Fathers said, “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” And those rights are endowed by our Creator, they’re not bestowed by any government.

SD MSM strangely silent about Thune’s connection to the C-Street Mafia

jesus_066

Must be another campaign year coming up, Thune’s supporters are knocking on doors

Of course, this should not surprise any of us that no one is talking about Thune’s connection to this corrupt group of Senators. I suspect it will only be a matter of time before John jumps this ship before it sinks;

When I wrote about Sen. Ensign in my book about the evangelical political organization that runs the C Street House, “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power,” I described him as a “conservative casino heir elected to the Senate from Nevada, a brightly tanned, hapless figure who uses his Family connections to graft holiness to his gambling-fortune name.”

Oh, but it gets better;

Today’s roll call is just as impressive: Men under the Family’s religio-political counsel include, in addition to Ensign, Coburn and Pickering, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, both R-S.C.; James Inhofe, R-Okla., John Thune, R-S.D., and recent senators and high officials such as John Ashcroft, Ed Meese, Pete Domenici and Don Nickles. Over in the House there’s Joe Pitts, R-Penn., Frank Wolf, R-Va., Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., and John R. Carter, R-Texas. Historically, the Family has been strongly Republican, but it includes Democrats, too. There’s Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, for instance, a vocal defender of putting the Ten Commandments in public places, and Sen. Mark Pryor, the pro-war Arkansas Democrat responsible for scuttling Obama’s labor agenda. Sen. Pryor explained to me the meaning of bipartisanship he’d learned through the Family: “Jesus didn’t come to take sides. He came to take over.” And by Jesus, the Family means the Family.

I am deeply offended (seriously) that Thune would associate himself with a group of people who would so blantantly ignore separation of church and state – especially lawmakers. If we try to infuse religion into our laws how does that make us any different then the Taliban? I mean just read these words from one of the leaders;

Christian right leader — and Watergate felon — Chuck Colson, converted through the efforts of the Family, has boasted of it as a “veritable underground of Christ’s men all through government.”

Scary stuff! Thune needs to break all ties to this group ASAP – we’ll see though. As he climbs farther up the ladder of the GOP I have a feeling we will find out about all kinds of ‘clubs’ he belongs to.

H/T- Helga

No longer Ironic Johnny, more like predictable Johnny

handheld-gun

Thune is pissing a great opportunity to do the right thing down his leg over the above picture. Pitiful.

Of course John Thune is voting against Judge Sotomayor, for all the wrong reasons;

WASHINGTON – Senator John Thune announced today he would vote against Supreme Court Nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor and released the following statement:

After this review I have concluded that Judge Sotomayor has consistently advanced a narrow view of the Second Amendment,

No, I think you have a very broad view of the 2nd Amendment and it’s intended purpose, why else would 400 mayors team together against you;

A group representing more than 400 U.S. mayors is urging Congress to defeat a measure — one that could come to a vote today in the U.S. Senate — that would require states granting concealed weapons permits to honor permits issued by any other state.

Whether concealed weapons laws reduce crime is a hotly contested issue, but Sen. John Thune, the South Dakota Republican who proposed the measure, says the laws are effective.

“Since criminals are unable to tell who is and who is not carrying a firearm just by looking at a potential victim,” he said, “they are less likely to commit crimes when they fear that they may come in direct contact with an individual who is armed.”

WTF? Whose butt did you pull that from? Was it written on the back of a check from the NRA? Criminals are criminals. They will attack the armed and the unarmed if they are determined to commit a crime. Though I support 2nd amendment rights, I do so for recreational and protection purposes, not because you have fantasies of returning us back to the wild west. As the Mayor’s point out:

“Ambiguity as to the legality of firearm possession could lead to confusion among police officers that could result in catastrophic incidences,” the mayors write. “Congress should be working to make the job of a police officer more safe, not less.”

But John’s vote against Sotomayor gets even more freaking delusional with this statement;

Judge Sotomayor has also had seven of her 10 decisions reviewed by the Supreme Court overturned,

What John fails to mention is it is a Conservative leaning court, and secondly that Sotomayor has had ONLY 7 of her decisions overturned by the SC which is amazing since she has made thousands and thousands of decisions. I happened to watch a good portion of the hearings, I didn’t agree with everything Sotomayor had to say, but I did find her to be incredibly intelligent, forthright and honest in her answers. I also recall she has more experience then any other SC nominee in 100 years, even more then that whack job Scalia. I remember the 2nd Amendment line of questioning, she in no way said she would vote against 2nd Amendment rights, in fact, I found her answers to be quite balanced on the issue, unlike John’s view which is extremely slanted towards one of his campaign contributors, the NRA. I suggest Thune watch ‘Bowling for Columbine’ then reconsider his vote.

What a tool.

H/T- Randall on the Mayor’s reference