"Dad, I don't want you to be upset, but I'm afraid of what I might do... next person that calls me a f*cking jew, I'm going to beat the shit out of them."

The following is a five minute dramatization of the climate of aggressive evangelical Christianity encountered at the USAF Academy by Mikey Weinstein's son and which led Weinstein, a USAF honor graduate during the 1970's, to form the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The short includes appearances from Bernard M. Kauderer, Vice Admiral ( USN, Ret.), Former commander of all US Naval submarine forces, Richard Lamm, three term governor of Colorado,  Richard T. Schlosberg lll, former publisher and CEO, LA Times and Denver Post,  Bobby Muller, Nobel Peace Prize winner, co-founder of international campaign to ban land mines, Joseph C. Wilson, lV, former US Ambassador, Robert T. Herres, General ( USAF, Ret.), Former Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Ed Asner.

Under the radar and through the Internet, Evans' new book targeting Iran hit #1 on the New York Times paperback bestseller list in early June

Mike Evans may not be a household name, but he is doing all he can to encourage President Bush to act militarily against Iran before the end of 2008.  Just prior to its mid-April release, Evans began his one-man (no doubt with assistance from his publisher) guerilla war in support of his new book advocating military action against Iran, and against what he calls "secular humanist God-haters" and "pro-Islamic radical sympathizers." And he seems to have won ... at least one battle. On Sunday, June 3, the book, "The Final Move Beyond Iraq: The Final Solution While The World Sleeps" (FrontLine, 2007), landed on the New York Times bestsellers' list at #1 in the paperback category.

Flying under the mainstream media's radar, using near-daily e-mail blasts along with postings on his website, Evans convinced large numbers of his supporters to buy his book; a fair number also heeded his plea to help promote it by writing 5-star book reviews at Amazon.com.  

While the book offers up a host of well-worn Bush Administration talking points - Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction was likely shipped to Syria; it's "better we fight in the streets of Baghdad then in Washington, Los Angeles, or Dallas" - it also forcefully argues that Iran is the major player in fomenting unrest in the Middle East, and needs to be dealt with forcefully.

When it comes to Holsinger's nomination, the record goes beyond homophobia: He has been involved in a Kentucky real estate deal gone sour, and during his watch as the VA's chief medical officer there were a series of deaths at a Chicago VA hospital.

While the Bush administration didn't invent cronyism -- handing over administration jobs to friends, funders and longtime supporters -- it certainly has put its own unique stamp on the concept.

When the history of Team Bush is written, "cronyism" will be writ large with "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," leading the way. The hiring -- and ultimate firing -- of "Brownie" -- former FEMA head Michael Brown -- however, is only one example of how the uninformed, the unprepared, the prejudiced, and the unqualified have made their way to administration posts.

And that's just about where President Bush's nomination of Dr. James Holsinger to be surgeon general comes in.

Will dismissing GOP frontrunners Giuliani and McCain as unacceptable presidential candidates and getting involved in a series of squabbles with fellow conservative evangelicals, diminish the power of Focus on the Family founder?

With the Rev. Jerry Falwell gone; Coral Ridge Ministries' D. James Kennedy seriously ill, the Rev. Pat Robertson in a perpetual state of hoof-and-mouth disease -- although still raking in handsome amounts of dough -- Ralph Reed tainted by the Abramoff Scandal, and Pastor Ted Haggard just plain tainted, it appears that the time is ripe for Focus on the Family founder and Christian radio psychologist Dr. James Dobson, to crank up what blogger Richard Rothstein has termed his "vast bigotry-based political machine" and seize the religious right's center stage. Or has Dobson, who has gotten himself embroiled in a series of conflicts with fellow evangelicals, missed his moment?

Over the past few months Dobson has been a whirling dervish of activity: he's met with President Bush to discuss Iran and other matters related to national security and the so-called war on terrorism; devoted a full week of his radio program -- which reaches more than 200 million people in 164 countries -- to "the threat of radical Islam"; dissed two of the Republican Party's frontrunners for the party's 2008 presidential nomination; hosted -- and appeared to approve of -- former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's on-the-air confessional; got into a medium-sized kerfluffle when he said that Fred Thompson wasn't Christian enough, and then denied having said it, and then blamed it all on the liberal media; continued to oppose evangelicals initiatives to make climate change part of the Christian right's agenda; and got blasted by a coalition of right-to-lifers in a full-page ad placed in Dobson's hometown newspaper.

Joel Rosenberg, the Christian bestselling author and close friend to Israeli officials, wants the Bush Administration to deal forcefully with Iran

According to OneNewsNow.com - a news service run by Donald Wildmon's American Family Association -- "`Epicenter: Why The Current Rumblings In The Middle East Will Change Your Future," released last year by Joel Rosenberg, has been released as a DVD.

Featuring interviews with Israeli leaders like former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the crisis in the Middle East, the DVD, timed to correspond with the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War, focuses on the threat of Iran and that country's growing relationship with Russia. "Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, seems to be leading his country away from friendship with the West and toward an alliance with radical Islamic regimes such as in Iran," says Rosenberg.

In a blog post from Jerusalem late last year, Rosenberg, the bestselling Christian novelist, wrote: "The buzz here in the last few days is that Israel is seriously considering a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities and ballistic missile sites." Given Israel's less than sterling performance against Hezbollah this summer, Rosenberg is not convinced that Israel "has the capacity -- or the will -- at the moment to neutralize the Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile threat."

Rosenberg, like many other Christian Zionists, are hopeful that President Bush will be up to that task.  

International Fellowship of Christians and Jews scrubbed co-founder Ralph Reed's name from its website after giving Reed's Century Strategies more than $800,000 in contracts

While Rabbi Daniel Lapin's involvement with Jack Abramoff hasn't exactly cost him many friends in the conservative Christian evangelical community, it has caused him to lower his profile a bit over the past several months. Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, who, in addition to his ground-breaking work raising huge amounts of money for Israel from evangelical Christians thru his International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and being a strong ally of U.S. Christian Zionists, has picked up the slack.

At a recent conference at the Center for Jewish Studies at Queens College in New York City on the state of world Jewry titled "Is it 1938 again?", Rabbi Eckstein answered the question with an "emphatic yes," the Florida Jewish News reported. "Eckstein called for a strategic alliance with evangelical Christians as 'our best friends and closest allies,' the newspaper pointed out. "He brushed off concerns about their supposed ulterior motives -- converting Jews and advancing Armageddon -- as a 'figment of, if I can say it, this liberal, Jewish and journalistic imagination.'"

Over the years, Eckstein, the founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) has raised millions of dollars from conservative Christian evangelicals for his organization's various projects. He is often credited as being one of the first Jewish religious leaders to advocate building relationships with conservative Christian evangelicals.

However, on the road to raising tens of millions of dollars, it appears that he has diverted a fair portion of the money to a half dozen media relations, direct mail and telemarketing companies, including Century Strategies, run by Ralph Reed, the Bigham Agency and Krieger Associates.

On May 23rd, Americans United For The Separation Of Church and State put out a press release, concerning a letter AU had just sent to top Air Force officials warning them against USAF participation in an upcoming Memorial Day Celebration planned to occur at Stone Mountain in Georgia. Given the Christian sectarian nature of the sponsoring groups, the scheduled participation of the US military, including hourly B-2 Bomber flyovers and paratroop jumps onto the Stone Mt. grounds by troops from Ft. Benning seemed to clearly violate church-state separation. By May 25th, as described by Alan Cooperman, for the Washington Post, The Air Force and Army rapidly backpedaled. An AU follow up portrayed a happy aftermath, at least for supporters of church-state separation; "Due to intervention by Americans United, the show will go on this weekend in Stone Mountain, Ga., but without the military's stamp of approval, reports The Washington Post", read AU's official blog. But was that actually true ? Sadly, I have to report, I have to disagree with AU's assessment and I'll be elaborating, in subsequent installments here at Talk To Action, on what I saw, May 26th through 28th, 2007, at Stone Mountain.

CRM spokesperson claims closing the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ and the Center for Christian Statesmanship is not tied to founder D. James Kennedy's ill health

When the slate of conservative dream-teamers joined some 1,300 attendees at this year's Reclaiming America for Christ conference in early March, few in the crowd could have predicted that within two months the gathering's high-powered sponsoring organization would shut its doors. In late April, that's exactly what D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries did when they announced they were closing the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ.

Speculation on the reasons for the closures initially focused on the failing health of Kennedy, the founder of the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida-based Coral Ridge Ministries (CRM). Since suffering a major heart attack in late December, Kennedy has not been heard from publicly.

According to investigative reporter Mike Reynolds, Kennedy has been recovering in a hospital in Michigan -- far from his Florida home -- and, after an initial flurry of official comments about his condition, few recent progress reports have been issued. It is unclear when the "Update on Dr. Kennedy's Health" that appears on the website of The Center for Reclaiming America for Christ (CRAC) was issued, as no date is attached to it.

In my open letter to John Hagee, CUFI, and CUFI's Executive Director David Brog ( which I will be sending to CUFI by registered mail ) I inform CUFI and it's leaders about the Coronado swastika and call for CUFI and John Hagee to capitalize on their growing political clout to call for bills in the US Senate and House of Representatives to requisition funds so that the US Navy has the money to structurally alter the offending building complexes so as to remove the absurd and grotesque anti-Semitic displays they represent. Government sponsored Anti-Semitic displays were common in Nazi Germany and have no place whatsoever in US government building architecture and the issue of intent is wholly immaterial. The Coronado swastika and cross complexes represent a affront to the memories of Holocaust victims, their families, and Holocaust survivors everywhere ; if John Hagee, David Brog, and CUFI's leadership are truly committed to Jews they will divert some energy away from advocacy for an apocalyptic conflict involving a US attack on Iran and towards addressing, and removing, the symbolic blasphemy encoded in brick and mortar and on a vast scale at the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado, California. Otherwise, Jews everywhere will have ample reason for doubting CUFI's sincerity.

[UPDATE March 24, 2008. Activist Publicizes Second Giant US Government Subsidized Swastika Building: Since I posting this original story, about the giant Swastika-shaped dormitory complex at the Coronado, California US Naval Amphibious Base south of San Diego, Jewish-American activist Avrahaum Segol has discovered and publicized the existence of a second giant swastika building, built with US government financing, in Decatur Alabama and that story has been picked up by AP News [see below for details]. Segol has also provided me with an astounding architect's drawing of the NAB Amphibious Base swastika building that was signed off on by the US Navy Rear Admiral who commanded the NAB base at the time the structure was built and which seems to prove the Navy's claim, that the NAB Swastika structure was "accidental", to be patently absurd. click on image, right, for full size image of the drawing of the NAB complex as rendered by the architect's firm Hendrick & Mock and obtained by Avrahaum Segol

Now, Avrahaum Segol has, as reported on March 14, 2008 by AP News, uncovered a second giant US government subsidized swastika-shaped building, in Decatur Alabama. As Associated Press Reporter Jay Reeves reported, on the swastika-shaped Decatur, AL Methodist retirement home :

"The one-story building, designed in the mid-1970s and completed in 1980, underwent a $1 million alteration in 2001 with funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development following complaints by Democratic Sen. Howell Heflin, who has since died. But the addition of two wings did little to hide the offensive shape, and in some ways accentuates it. . .

The latest push to rid the landscape of the broken cross shape follows complaints from Avrahaum Segol, the same Israeli-American researcher who last fall helped publicize a swastika-shaped barracks at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego. The Navy said it would spend about $600,000 to alter the building, which opened in the 1960s, but the work has not yet been done.

Segol calls the Alabama retirement home a "sister swastika" to the building in California and says they were both part of a tangled, government-funded conspiracy to honor Nazis.

Segol claims the swastika shape of Wesley Acres in Decatur pays homage to the German scientists who came to nearby Huntsville after World War II and designed the rockets that put Americans on the moon.

Segol is also researching what he describes as anti-Semitic "replacement theology" art introduced into the US Supreme Court Building during the 1930's, and Segol has informed my that the Supreme Court has been blocking his access to Supreme Court archives that could clarify how, when, and exactly why the art was introduced to the Supreme Court Building.

[end of update]

On September 28, 2007 I covered, at the Daily Kos website, an astonishing story exposed and publicized more, than by any other person or agency, Avrahaum Segol. As I wrote:

"We knew what it [the building complex] was going to look like" - Architect John Mock The story of the US Navy's giant swastika-shaped barracks, built in the late 1960's and located at the Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, just South of San Diego, has been all over the news. Rightly so - it's the biggest government subsidized swastika display on Earth. Below is a YouTube presentation - a simple silent slide show of clips taken of views, through Google Earth, that zoom in, from space, on the giant NAB swastika complex. The US media has now deigned to make this story into a major media spectacle. But, media depictions you may have heard in the last 24 hours, on the origin of the giant swastika-barracks which houses Navy SEALS, will probably all amount to evasion, distortions, or even lies.

"Because the portrayal of history so affects current policy, some groups have found it advantageous to their political agenda to distort historical facts intentionally. Those particularly adept at this are termed "revisionists." " - David Barton

Last Saturday, I uncovered revisionist US History within the Unit 6 core curriculum for the national Junior ROTC program ; about 1/2 million American high school students each year are unrolled in the JROTC. I was astounded ; a passage paraphrased from the writing of David Barton, the leading historical revisionist claiming that the United States was founded as a "Christian Nation", has been embedded within a national educational curriculum produced by the Department of Defense and taught, across the nation, to American public high schools students enrolled in Junior ROTC.

The death of a public figure -- especially one as controversial as the Rev. Jerry Falwell -- is guaranteed to unleash a maelstrom of commentary. In the hours since his death, a number of Falwell's supporters have unstintingly praised him as a seminal and courageous figure of the New Religious Right.

This evening, at the Republican Party's second presidential debate in South Carolina, Falwell will undoubtedly be remembered fondly. Sen. John McCain, who in 2000 called Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson "agents of intolerance" but had recently sought his support, issued a statement praising Falwell for his contributions.

Tonight, CNN's Larry King will be devoting his program -- on which Falwell was a frequent guest -- to remembering him, with Ralph Reed, the former executive director of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition and now most often associated with the imprisoned GOP uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and Franklin Graham, the son of the Rev. Billy Graham and the head of Samaritan's Purse, among the scheduled guests.

While Falwell helped place conservative evangelicals at the forefront of the political landscape, he was also in part responsible for coarsening the political dialogue in this country. In a career that was marked by a continuous stream of controversial -- and sometimes wacky (Tinky Winky) -- statements, perhaps none was as meanspirited as his reaction to 9/11.

On September 14, 2001, I wrote: