Think Progress

Cafe Press Bans All ‘Pray For Obama: Psalm 109:8′ Merchandise

This week, both the websites of CafePress.com and Zazzle.com decided to stop selling merchandise that featured the latest right-wing craze: the slogan “Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8.” However, Cafe Press then changed its mind and told ThinkProgress that it was reinstating the merchandise, which fell within “fair political commentary.”

Whether it’s “fair political commentary” was quickly questioned. While 109:8 reads, “Let his days be few; and let another take his office,” the next line is, “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow,” suggesting far more violent rhetoric than simple criticism. Diana Butler Bass at Beliefnet has explained that Psalm 109 is “considered one of the most difficult of all the psalms — full of violent images of vengeance and death.”

Yesterday, Cafe Press announced that it was again reversing itself and removing all the merchandise in response to strong public pressure:

The public debate started with questioning if the design was simply intended to be criticism of the President or something much worse. The discourse was surprisingly civil online, given the heated nature of the topic. Given that, and the positions of groups like the ACLU and the Anti-Defamation League, we decided to let the dialogue play out publicly before making a final decision.

Last night we posted a poll on our blog, read through the emails we’ve received and weighed the nature of the calls we’ve received on the topic. In the process we also learned that many of the original designers of the Psalm 109:8 designs had already decided to remove them on their own.

General consensus has proven that the design does point to a broader interpretation of the Psalm and thus has been deemed inappropriate for sale at CafePress.

The results of the Cafe Press poll were 76 percent calling the slogan “overly inflammatory and inappropriate” and 22 percent saying it was fair.

(HT: TP commenter Marie)

New Right-Wing Craze Prays That Obama’s ‘Days Be Few’

The newest far-right craze is an anti-Obama slogan that is making its way onto t-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, and even teddy bears: “Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8,” which reads, “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” The meme is also taking off on Twitter, with conservatives calling it “hilarious.” Commentators have noted that it’s unclear whether the intent is to hope for an end to Obama’s time in office — or an end to his life. But a look at the lines in the rest of the psalm hint at the latter:

Let his days be few; and let another take his office.
Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labor.
Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children.
Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

Diana Butler Bass at Beliefnet explains that Psalm 109 is one of the “imprecatory” prayers, “a lament in the form of petition to destroy one’s enemies.” While perhaps intended to be a joke, she notes that the psalm actually “entreats God to destroy the president”:

It is the personal prayer of an individual, someone who has been dealt an injustice by another–and usually more powerful–person. The words of Psalm 109 are those of deep agony, the longings of a victim for retribution and justice. This psalm is considered one of the most difficult of all the psalms–full of violent images of vengeance and death.

Quite a few of the “Pray for Obama” items are being sold at CafePress.com, although many of them have been taken off of the site (here’s a cached version of some of them). Cafe Press representative Margene H. told ThinkProgress that while the site took down some of the “Pray for Obama” items today, it is now in the process of reinstating them:

We initially pulled the Psalm 109:8 content from our products today because broader media dialog indicated that these designs potentially suggested violence towards the president. Based on current public discourse and further review of the actual content, we have determined that it is fair political commentary and we are in the process of reinstating this merchandise. As with all of our content, these designs will continue to be reviewed and if at any time their meaning is construed as advocating violence we will revisit our decision.

On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow spoke with “Patience With God” author Frank Schaeffer, who said that while the psalm was “frightening” in a secular context, it’s even “more threatening” in a biblical context.

Right-Wing American Family Association Misfires In The War On Christmas

It’s not even Thanksgiving, but the American Family Association (AFA) has already taken up arms in the War on Christmas. On Nov. 11, the right-wing organization announced that it was urging its followers to boycott Gap Inc. (Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy) from now until Christmas Day because the company refuses to say the word “Christmas”:

For years, Gap has refused to use the word Christmas in its television commercials, newspaper ads and in-store promotions, despite tens of thousands of consumer requests to recognize Christmas and in spite of repeated requests from AFA to do the same.

Last year, Gap issued this politically-correct statement to Christmas shoppers: “Gap recognizes that many traditions are celebrated throughout this season and we feel it is important to display holiday signage that is inclusive to everyone.”

Christmas is special because of Jesus. It’s not just a “winter holiday.” For millions of Americans the giving and receiving of gifts is in honor of the One who gave Himself. For the Gap to pretend that isn’t the foundation of the Christmas season is political correctness at best and religious bigotry at worst. The Gap is censoring the word Christmas, pure and simple.

AFA’s first shot in the war is a misfire, as Dan Neil of the LA Times points out today. In one of the first lines of Gap’s new holiday ad, the actors yell, “Go Christmas!” (as well as “Go Hanukkah! Go Kwanzaa! Go Solstice!”) Watch it:

ThinkProgress also checked out the websites of Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy and quickly found several items that feature Christmas items including several Christmas books, a pair of boxer shorts that says “Christmas” in several languages and pajama pants that also have “Christmas” written on them.

“The big loser here is the AFA,” writes Neil. “The annual War-on-Christmas drumbeat is absolutely not about defending the sacredness of Christmas. It is instead — transparently — marketing, a ratings gambit for Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, and for the AFA, the centerpiece of its annual fundraising. This year, thanks to Gap, the AFA fumbled its boycott ball and in the process managed to look both intolerant and out of touch.”

G. Gordon Liddy Says ‘I’m Convinced’ That ‘Barack Obama Is A Muslim,’ Gary Bauer Doesn’t Disagree

On his radio show today, G. Gordon Liddy hosted former Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer to discuss his Human Events column on the Fort Hood massacre, in which Bauer — echoing his close personal friend Bill Kristol — declared that “[p]olitical correctness has been radical Islam’s greatest asset in its war against America. Let’s execute it.” “Accommodation of Islam pervades our schools,” added Bauer in his column.

In the beginning of their discussion, Liddy said that political correctness towards Islam “precedes the Obama administration” because President Bush proclaimed that “Islam is a religion of peace.” “You know that’s just not true,” said Liddy. Later in the conversation, after Bauer complained that Obama’s Homeland Security adviser John Brennan would lead the investigation into what the U.S. intelligence community knew about Nidal Malik Hasan before his attack, Liddy announced his belief that President Obama “is a Muslim”:

LIDDY: I’m convinced that despite his protestations to the contrary, that Barack Obama is a Muslim. I don’t believe that he’s a Christian at all. I believe he’s a Muslim.

BAUER: Well, you know the church that he famously or infamously attended was, was odd in many ways. Not only the rantings of its pastor, the clear racist rantings of its pastor, which the President chose to listen to year after year with his family and his children. You know something that still in my view has never been adequately explained. But it was also a church that had some real strange ideas about Islam and Christianity. I’ve seen a number of suggestions that there were many people in the congregation that considered themselves both Christian and Muslim. Something that I’m sure both real Christians and real Muslims would deny is possible.

Not only did Bauer not disagree with Liddy’s claim that Obama is lying about his Christianity, he went on to praise Liddy’s contribution to America’s political debate. “You do an outstanding job on your show bringing people the information they need,” said Bauer. “I commend you for the good work you do every day.” Listen to it here:

It’s not surprising that Liddy would hold such a fringe view. After all, he is a prominent birther who thinks that Obama is an “illegal alien.” Bauer, on the other hand, has previously written that he doesn’t want to “question the sincerity of Obama’s faith.” But in playing along with Liddy, that’s exactly what he has done.

Jewish Organizations Condemn GOP For Standing By As Tea Party Protesters Waved ‘Vile’ Anti-Semitic Signs

One of the most disturbing images from yesterday’s Tea Party rally against health care reform on Capitol Hill was a protester’s gruesome sign showing a pile of dead Holocaust victims. The banner — captured by ThinkProgress here — read: “National Socialist Health Care: Dachau, Germany – 1945.” Another sign said that “Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds [sic],” a reference to the famous Jewish banking family often implicated in conspiracy theories. Today, Nobel Prize winner and Holoacaust survivor Elie Wiesel strongly condemned the signs, calling them “indecent and disgusting.” From his foundation’s Twitter page:

The National Jewish Democratic Council also criticized the “vile invocations of Nazi and Holocaust rhetoric” and called out GOP leaders who stood in plain view of the signs but ignored them. The Simon Wiesenthal Center demanded that the rally organizers “publicly repudiate the use of Nazi and Holocaust imagery.” Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) made similar comments in a video he posted on YouTube, singling out the rally’s organizer, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN):

I can’t believe that Congresswoman Bachmann would stand where she stood, and see those images, and not have the common decency to say, “I disagree with the use of those images.” I think that she owes the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust an apology. She owes us all an apology. And I’m waiting. We’re all waiting.

Watch it:

When Politico asked House Minority Leader John Boehner’s (R-OH) spokesman for comment on these signs, he simply replied, “Leader Boehner did not see any such sign. Obviously, it would be grossly inappropriate.” Today, Rep. Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) spokesman called the photograph “inappropriate.”

Fox And Friends Muse About ‘Special Screenings’ And ‘Special Debriefings’ For Muslims In The Military

After news broke yesterday that the suspected gunman responsible for the “horrific outburst of violence” at Fort Hood, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was Muslim, some commentators began assigning “collective responsibility for the actions of one man” to the Muslim community as a whole. On Fox and Friends this morning, Geraldo Rivera warned against casting “a gloomy cloud of suspicion over all the Muslim G.I.s who serve with great honor”:

RIVERA: I think that the great tragedy of this incident is that it will cast a gloomy cloud of suspicion over all the Muslim G.I.s who serve with great honor and who are an amazing assist to the United States in this conflict we’re having with radical Islam. This will, and also, I remember my dad, just very briefly. When we were growing up there would be a notorious crime and my dad used to gather the family. We used to say, like a little prayer, “please God” that it’s not a Puerto Rican. You know because we had, dealing with so many social pressures and prejudices, dealing with all the rest of it, we didn’t want one of these awful examples to cast aspersion and negativity on our group. And this is the same thing with American Muslims now, specifically American Muslim G.I.s.

But, as both Raw Story and Media Matters have noted, later in the segment the hosts of Fox and Friends suggested that “special debriefings” and “special screenings” of Muslim soldiers should be considered. “If I’m going to be sticking in an outpost, I got to know the guy next to me is not going to want to kill me,” said Brian Kilmeade. Gretchen Carlson pondered whether the military had been “exercising political correctness in not approaching” Hasan “as seriously as they would have had he not been a Muslim.” Watch it:

Muslim- and Arab-American organizations have loudly spoken against Hasan’s attack. “We condemn this cowardly attack in the strongest terms possible and ask that the perpetrators be punished to the full extent of the law,” said a Council on American-Islamic Relations statement. In a statement, the Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in Military urged “the media, government officials and all of our fellow Americans to recognize that the actions of Hasan are those of a deranged gunman, and are in no way representative of the wider Arab American or American Muslim community.”

Did The Authors Of New Muslim Conspiracy Book Steal Documents From A Muslim Organization?

Wednesday, a small group of House Republicans — Reps. Sue Myrick (NC), John Shadegg (AZ), Paul Broun (GA) and Trent Franks (AZ) — hosted a press conference in the capitol building calling for an investigation of the Muslim-advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), alleging that the organization was “connected to…terrorists” and is “planting spies in key national security-related congressional offices.”

The four members of Congress based their claims on assertions made in the new book “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America,” co-authored by P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry. The authors of the book planted an intern inside of CAIR for six months. The authors claim that a memo the intern obtained from the group proves that the organization “planted spies” inside the nation’s national security infrastructure.

Now, CAIR has filed a criminal complaint against the authors of the book, alleging that the memo they are using to attack CAIR was stolen. Indeed, Sperry was interviewed by Radio America yesterday and admitted that the planted intern “collected whole boxes of evidence marked for shredding” and took documents that “he felt he needed to preserve as evidence [of illegal wrongdoing].” Listen here:

According to DC law, the authors could be guilty of conspiracy to commit theft with a “bias-related crime” specification, meaning that they could face up to 15 years in prison if the stolen document is deemed to have a value of $250 or more, or only 270 days if it is deemed to have less value. From the DC Code:

§ 22-3211. Theft [Formerly § 22-3811]

   (a) For the purpose of this section, the term “wrongfully obtains or uses” means: (1) taking or exercising control over property; (2) making an unauthorized use, disposition, or transfer of an interest in or possession of property; or (3) obtaining property by trick, false pretense, false token, tampering, or deception. The term “wrongfully obtains or uses” includes conduct previously known as larceny, larceny by trick, larceny by trust, embezzlement, and false pretenses.

§ 22-3212. Penalties for theft [Formerly § 22-3812]

   (a) Theft in the first degree. — Any person convicted of theft in the first degree shall be fined not more than $ 5,000 or imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both, if the value of the property obtained or used is $ 250 or more.
 
(b) Theft in the second degree. — Any person convicted of theft in the second degree shall be fined not more than $ 1,000 or imprisoned for not more than 180 days, or both, if the value of the property obtained or used is less than $ 250.

§ 22-3701. Definitions [Formerly § 22-4001]

   For the purposes of this chapter, the term:
 
   (1) “Bias-related crime” means a designated act that demonstrates an accused’s prejudice based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, marital status, personal appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, family responsibility, physical disability, matriculation, or political affiliation of a victim of the subject designated act.

§ 22-3703. Bias-related crime [Formerly § 22-4003]

   A person charged with and found guilty of a bias-related crime shall be fined not more than 11/2 times the maximum fine authorized for the designated act and imprisoned for not more than 1 1/2 times the maximum term authorized for the designated act.

Of course, there was no need to take documents to prove wrongdoing because CAIR was doing nothing illegal. The much-touted memos that the authors claim is evidence of a Muslim conspiracy to undermine the United States are remarkably benign. The passage the authors cite simply says that CAIR will “develop national initiatives such as a lobby day and [place] Muslim interns in Congressional offices.” As Glenn Greenwald notes, this is “consistent with what virtually every political advocacy group in the nation does; it’s normally called activism and democracy. But because, in this case, it’s a group of Muslims who are doing this, these House Republicans are depicting it as some sort of nefarious espionage plot against the U.S. that demands a criminal investigation.”

Right-Wing Panel Agrees Obama Is The ‘First Muslim American President’

At the How to Take Back America conference last weekend, attended by several Republican lawmakers, former Reagan official and prominent neoconservative Frank Gaffney, right-wing historian Bill Federer, and Christian activist Walid Shoebat hosted a panel on “How to understand Islam.” An attendee of the panel asked the three speakers if they would consider President Obama a Christian or a Muslim, given his “roots.” While Gaffney gave a now familiar response linking Obama to the Muslim Brotherhood, Federer and Shoebat provided new theories, which elicited praise from the crowd:

GAFFNEY: If Bill Clinton, on the basis of special interest pandering and identity politics, was properly called the first Black American President, on that same basis, Barack Obama should be called the first Muslim American President. […] But there is evidence that a lot of Muslims think he is Muslim. But whether he is or whether he isn’t, the key to me, is is he pursuing that is indistinguishable in important respects from that of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose mission ladies and gentlemen, we know from a trial in Dallas last year, is to quote to destroy Western civilization from within by its own miserable hand. That’s what we need to keep our eye on.

FEDERER: In Islam, if your father is a Muslim, you’re automatically a Muslim. Since Barack’s father, stepfather, and grandfather were all Muslim, the Muslim world views him as Muslim. Mohammad allowed his warriors to say they’re not Muslim to gain advantage and um, but he’s uh, Islam permits you to lie to advance Islam, Saul Alinsky allows you to lie to advance your communist agenda, you can put them together.

SHOEBAT: I came from an American mother, Obama came from an American mother. I came from a Muslim father, Obama came from a Muslim father. […] Did you know that your President knows how to do the call to the prayer in eloquent classical Arabic? […] No one can do this in classical Arabic language unless he grew up and was raised as a Muslim.

Watch it:

During the panel, Shoebat advocated entering Arab countries and converting Muslims to Christianity. He also went on a rant about how Muslims in meat packaging plants are contaminating America’s food supply because their hands are unclean.

Gaffney has a record of comparing Obama to Hitler — a major theme of the conference — and spreading other absurd reasons for why he thinks Obama is Muslim. As Matt Duss has noted, although it may be difficult to take Gaffney as a serious analyst, his “transparently bigoted” attacks are given a platform on major media outlets. This reason alone is why Gaffney’s smears shouldn’t be ignored.

In the past week alone, Gaffney has appeared as a pundit on Fox News and MSNBC, has been featured in an article in NewsMax, and wrote an opinion column for the Washington Times.