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Born May 18, 1953; got saved at Truett Memorial BC in Hayesville, NC 1959. On rigged ballot which I did not rig got Most Intellectual class of 71, Gaffney High School. Furman Grad, Sociology major but it was little tougher than Auburn football players had Had three dates with beautiful women the summer of 1978. Did not marry any of em. Never married anybody cause what was available was undesirable and what was desirable was unaffordable. Unlucky in love as they say and even still it is sometimes heartbreaking. Had a Pakistani Jr. Davis Cupper on the Ropes the summer of 84, City Courts, Rome Georgia I've a baby sitter, watched peoples homes while they were away on Vacation. Freelance writer, local consultant, screenwriter, and the best damn substitute teacher of Floyd County Georgia in mid 80's according to an anonymous kid passed me on main street a few years later when I went back to get a sandwich at Schroeders. Had some good moments in Collinsville as well. Ask Casey Mattox at www.clsnet.org if he will be honest about it. I try my best to make it to Bridges BBQ in Shelby NC at least four times a year.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

The Koch Bros Dark Money and Pressler's fundy SBC Takeover

      NPR Fresh Air today had a conversation with Jane Mayer author of the latest book on the Koch Brothers. It could not be more timely as Paul Pressler, the right winger from the Netherworlds of Jesse Helms and fringes of the John Birch Society has been in the news of late in the corner of Ted Cruz for President of the United States. And just last month Christian Ethics Today, a publication whose editor Pat Anderson is a graduate of Furman University, a couple years after Marshall Frady, had a review of Robert Wuthnow's Rough Country spotlighting Lee Atwater's infamous" nigger memo".  LBJ's press secretary Bill Moyers has contributed to CET and is a reader. I hope this blog comes to the attention of Anderson and sees publication in some form in CET.

    If you understand Pressler the way Moyers, Ellen Rosenberg and Bill Friday understood him you come away from Rough Country with a much harsher view of Pressler and the charlatans who orchestrated the SBC into the Hard Right Political column of the Koch Brothers and fundamentalism than the McClatchey review in CET would lead you to believe. Google the Thomas Powers review of a couple years ago at nybooks.com. Powers also understands.
   Friday is former chancellor of UNC system and a favorite of NC PBS having a longtime Friday evening show across the state. He told leading pastor in the resistance to Presslerism , Cecil Sherman, a couple decades ago: "The most significant event in NC in the 80s was the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC seminary at the town of Wake Forest, as Helms and Pressler joined at the hip in right wing bircher anti Martin Luther King politics knews that at SEBTS they had an avenue to get into every hamlet and berg in the state in the pulpits of Baptist churches.
     Today on NPR Mayer revealed a similar strategy of Koch brothers through advocacy groups and think tanks.
      In a later version of this blog I will share a letter Ellen Rosenberg shared with me. Her book of 88 the Southern Baptists, a Subculture in Transition had a chapter on Pressler's right wing political strategy to that time.
    Rough Country if read with educated eyes shows how the Texas Baptist fundamentalism of Pressler and the Oil Industry morephed into the Tea Party now squarely in the corner of Ted Cruz Candidacy for President with everything his former pastors Jim De Loach and Ed Young at 2nd Bap Houston bring to the cause.
    It all fits nicely into the politics of stupidity Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke against.
    In 1993 I asked President Carter about Tom Edsall's report it was the oil industry politics of the kind Pressler was born into in the family of an Exxon VP, right wing politics that went as far back as Joe McCarthy financing strategic primary defeats of progressive forces that would support windfall profits tax on the oil industry. Another piece of the cloth of the Koch Brothers and Pressler Strategies.
     In a sense the tragedy of Bush 41 was while he spoke against the Birch politics of Harris County (pressler's precinct) in 1966 in a Congressional Race, Bush 41 came to embrace the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC and with Rove and Richard Land Bush 43 followed suit. Jon Meacham's hints at this aspect of the Bush family in his recent bio of 41
     Compare Pressler's drive and personality to the leader of the takeover of the Lutheran Missouri synod; both on the Margins of the Birch Society and Texas Politics of Coke Stevenson of 48 and the rightwing in Texas Oil Community that came to resist LBJ, and from there the likes of Carlyle Marney, James Dunn, Jimmy Allen, Jimmy Carter and Bill Moyers.
    The evidence accumulates and darkness of the political strategy is clear and Paul Pressler, his oil community, Helms and Bham Birrcher Albert Lee Smith, the Koch Brothers are in the cabal at every turn.
    Talk to Rice Proff, Chandler Davidson. He knows.
    Listen online to the Fresh Air Interview today.
    Tell me Pressler was not in the room for one of the Koch Bros secret Donor Summits.
    More later.

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