Sarah Palin's Pastor Problems
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04 September 2008
This 2008 election week is quickly turning into the Sarah Palin Chronicles. As if she doesn't have enough controversy to deal with, new questions about controversial speakers at Palin's church have surfaced.Remember the weeks and weeks of "Rev. Wright..." this and "Rev. Wright..." that coming from the Republicans during Obama's primary? Well maybe they shouldn't have gone there.
Not only is her long-time church under so much scrutiny that they shut down their website, but new information about Palin actually being in attendance when a highly controversial speaker spoke at the church has been revealed.Those sermons of the pastor have also been conveniently removed.
ABCNews is reporting that Palin attended Wasilla Assembly of God since she was a teenager up to 2002.
Huffington Post apparently got their hands on some of the information before it was shut down. Here's an excerpt from their report:
Months after hinting at possible damnation for Kerry supporters, Kalnins bristled at the treatment President Bush was receiving over the federal government's handling of Hurricane Katrina. "I hate criticisms towards the President," he said, "because it's like criticisms towards the pastor -- it's almost like, it's not going to get you anywhere, you know, except for hell. That's what it'll get you."
Criticize the President = go to hell. Okay.
ABC reports that Palin was in attendance when David Brickner gave a sermon at her church. Here's an excerpt:
The Politico's Ben Smith reported that Palin was present for an Aug. 17 sermon by David Brickner, an activist for the missionary group "Jews for Jesus," considered quite controversial among many American Jews. The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith has criticized Brickner for "targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception."
Brickner in his sermon described terrorist attacks on Israelis as part of "an ongoing reflection of the fact that there is judgment" by God of those who have not accepted Jesus as their savior.
"When Jesus was standing in that temple, He spoke that that judgment was coming, that there's a reality to the judgment of unbelief. ... Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real."
Brickner described when his son Isaac recently "was in Jerusalem, he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment -- you can't miss it. "
YIKES! If the media doesn't slobber all over this story and throw it in my face day and night whether I care about it or not, then we'll know where the real bias lies.
Not that pastors should be the focus of covering a campaign, but you can't do it to one candidate and not have the same type of scrutiny -- and judgement -- heaped upon one without doing it to the other.
This is the latest in a string of controversies around Palin including but not limited to:
- belittling both small town and large city community organizers everywhere (new! she unloaded that little number Wednesday night)
- being under investigation in Alaska for "troopergate"
- having underaged, pregnant teenaged daughter; Palin wants abstinence-only programs taught in school
- questions about whether she was thoroughly vetted; McCain only talked to her at most 2 times before offering her the VP spot
- no National or International foreign policy experience
- being endorsed by indicted Alaska senator Ted Stevens
- being for the "Bridge to Nowhere" before she was against it
- Republican's privately questioning whether she was a "gimmicky" pick and can't understand why a much more qualified woman wasn't picked
- gutting spending for special needs programs before she had a special needs child in Alaska
- ...and lord knows what else (no pun intended)
