President Obama Stops at Billy Graham's at NC Mountain Home

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/25/us/AP-US-Obama-Billy-Graham.html?_r=1

President Barack Obama made a pilgrimage Sunday to Billy Graham's mountainside home, concluding his North Carolina vacation with his first meeting with the ailing evangelist who has counseled commanders in chief since Dwight Eisenhower.

The 48-year-old president made the short drive to Montreat from Asheville, where he spent the weekend, to see the 91-year-old Graham and son Franklin, also an evangelist.

''Rev. Graham has obviously been an important spiritual leader to past presidents,'' White House spokesman Bill Burton said. ''He's a real treasure to our country. And the president appreciates the opportunity to visit him at his home.''

Burton said he anticipated the two leaders to pray together during their private meeting, which lasted a short time. Obama had to leave for a memorial service in West Virginia for the 29 coal miners killed in an explosion on April 5.

see an over-rated hack and his maniacal spawn engage a man who knows more about the Bible than the two of them put together.

Main Entry: obei·sance
Pronunciation: \ō-ˈbē-sən(t)s, ə-, -ˈbā-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English obeisaunce obedience, obeisance, from Anglo-French obeisance, from obeissant, present participle of obeir to obey
Date: 14th century
1 : a movement of the body made in token of respect or submission : bow
2 : acknowledgment of another's superiority or importance : homage <makes obeisance to her mentors>

They all have to do it for some reason i cannot fathom from here on the West Coast. If Franklin Graham thinks it will continue when his dad's gone, he's delusional.

But you already knew that.

(That's the edited version; Franklin wouldn't have liked the original draft one bit...)

His fiery denunciation of Islam was especially disgusting. Not worthy conduct for a "man of the cloth" or for an emotionally stable adult, for that matter.

That's the exact phrase that came to my mind. He's very tight with Miss Sarah, which is all I need to know to determine that he's not a real Christian.

Good morning!

Agree. They are more than a bit connected those two.

For some time in summer of 2008 I thought McCain might choose Franklin Graham as his vice prez nom.

I'd say, "He couldn't do much worse," but he proved me wrong on that count in choosing Palin!

I was struck by the viciousness and savagery of Franklin Graham's dismissal of Islam. It just seemed to come out of nowhere.

it's in the job description.

P.S. I know from whence I speak -- I used to date his cousin (briefly).

having to pay court to the religiously insane

ADL Says Billy Graham's Anti-Semitic Views on Nixon Tape are "Chilling and Frightening"

New York, NY, March 1, 2002 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today called the anti-Semitic views the Rev. Billy Graham shared with President Richard Nixon "chilling and frightening even today, 30 years after the statements were made." ADL was shocked to learn from the just released tapes that the spiritual advisor to American Presidents believed and espoused age-old classical anti-Semitic canards.

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement:

We were shocked to learn that a man of the cloth and stature of the Rev. Billy Graham held anti-Semitic views and freely shared them with President Richard Nixon, as revealed on the just released Nixon tapes. Rev. Graham's assertion that Jews had a "stranglehold" on the country and that a second Nixon Administration "might be able to do something," is chilling and frightening, even today, 30 years after the statements were made.

It is shameful that one of America's most respected religious leaders and a spiritual advisor to Presidents believed and espoused age-old classical anti-Semitic canards.

http://www.adl.org/presrele/ASUS_12/4048_12.asp



Nixon and the Jews. Again.

If his tirades against Jews weren't anti-Semitism, what were they?

By David Greenberg

Posted Tuesday, March 12, 2002, at 11:44 AM ET

Richard Nixon's reputation as a hateful, vindictive anti-Semite was reinforced late last month when the National Archives, which has been releasing the 3,700 hours of Nixon's tape-recorded White House conversations in installments since 1996, dropped another batch.

Whenever new Nixon tapes are released, the next-day stories invariably highlight the most outrageous tidbits, which typically include some anti-Jewish slurs. This go-round was no exception. Along with Nixon's apparently unserious threat to nuke Vietnam, reporters pounced on this 1972 exchange about Jews in the media between Nixon and the Rev. Billy Graham:

BG: This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain.

RN: You believe that?

BG: Yes, sir.

RN: Oh, boy. So do I. I can't ever say that, but I believe it.

BG: No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something.

As the Chicago Tribune noted, Nixon, Graham, and Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman also cracked anti-Semitic jokes, discussed which journalists were Jewish, and lamented that Washington reporting had deteriorated since Jews entered the trade. (As the National Archives explains here, there are no complete transcripts of the tapes. However, historian Stanley Kutler edited a valuable collection of transcripts relating to Nixon's Watergate transgressions, entitled Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes, and a University of Virginia project is planning to publish volumes of additional transcripts.)

http://www.slate.com/id/2063030

Billy Graham is a fraking scumbag and political opportunist of the first order of magnitude.

O wait...

- - -

Richard Nixon and Billy Graham.

And we were just about to sit down to lunch...

I don't value Grahams religious BS at all. But he did apologize for those comments made, well over 30 years ago. Holding that against him now is a failure to recognize the flaws of the human condition.

Isn't someone who professes to be spreading the word of Cheeses supposed to be held to a higher standard than a politician?

As a native WVian, I can tell you, we never required that anyone be a Klan member in order for them to get our vote. Byrd use to support segregation too. Ya know what happened? His grandson died and this caused him to do some serious soul searching regarding his word view. And he changed. You want to hold Graham's religious BS against him, thats fine. Holding comments he made some 30+ years ago and which he has since apologized for is PETTY.

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said this, to fucking Rick Warren of all people, during the campaign:

"I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian, it's also a sacred union. God's in the mix... I am not somebody who promotes same-sex marriage, but I do believe in civil unions."

There's video at the link.

http://www.queerty.com/obama-and-mccain-define-marriage-at-rick-warren-forum-20080817/#ixzz0mBAlg1kv

I bet that stop made the nice good invisible sky man happy

declining health.

He's been in and out of hospitals for a while now.

Obama may have decided to initiate the visit to make a showing against Franklin while ostensibly paying homage to the old man.

Obama is perfectly comfortable with religious bigots -- just ask Rick Warren.

into the den of wounded lions with whom he wildly agrees.

Warren is trash. He's rich trash, but he's trash nevertheless. Also I don't like his shirts. They suck. Also I don't like his Christianity. It sucks as well.

:cry:

What value is there to that? These people believe in fairy tales.


Lots of people fall ill every day.

than CEOs of health care insurance companies to tend to them, visit them, lift their spirits, and provide supportive company.

Presidents and Prime Ministers deal in some degree or other of public relations. There's a lot of bunting hung up on that wall, certainly. But in politics, the bunting is often the background.

My dismissal of the Grahams goes back some long way, long before Obama was elected.

I'm sticking with my theory that word may have reached the president of a sudden downtown in Billy Graham's health. In visiting him, Obama walks in not only Billy Graham's intellectual equal but his vastly superior intellectual president. If Graham hobnobbed with other presidents -- white ones -- he can also receive this newest president, who does not quite look like Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter, after all.

I may be wrong in my theory and of course my negative view of the Grahams is unlikely to change.

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high school not to death or relocation but to the Billy Graham Crusade.

We had grown up together in the same neighborhood and played baseball at the same park.

He happened to like the Mamas and the Papas and Eric Clapton. His mother would not let him listen to either one so we listened to them at my house. She also would not let him go see PAINT YOUR WAGON with Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood because one of the female characters was a prostitute.

In any case he went with a church group to the Billy Graham Crusade in Dallas, several states away, and came back imbued with the spirit of evangelism. He noted how "great" Graham was. The rest of our baseball group nodded at him in nondescript nods, unwilling and mostly incapable of telling him we didn't really give two shits about the Billy Graham Crusade's general mission. It didn't seem to have anything to do with us, we didn'lt see how we could be grafted onto the Graham scenario, and we were concerned about all the talk of redemption and angels and the end of the world.

I reference the end of the world because my friend did note that several girls attended the rally -- in an outdoor arena in summer in Dallas mind you -- in halter tops. My friend found this wardrobe selection to be in poor taste. His objection might have played well at John Ashcroft's house but we were unmoved. If Jesus can excuse the adulteress about to be stoned by villages, we felt our friend could get over the halter tops.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled thread.

so that was the silver lining. Also in Dallas, sadly I saw no halter tops.

Granted.

You may have been in the No Halter Tops section of the arena.

you can't type.

Fucking idiot.

It should be "villageRs" and not "villages."

Git it right next time or git out of Dodge.

Rhymes with Pillage-ARRS

yuck!

He refused to meet with Graham Cracker when he called upon the White House. He knew even then that Graham was a con man hustler.

Give 'im hell, Harry! :bounce:

that purveyors of "voodoo" are national treasures when they are, in my opinion, national liabilities.
When, if ever, will people learn that religious leaders teach their followers to behave like frightened sheep rather than confident, objective thinkers?

In 1949, he gained national attention with a preaching campaign he called a "crusade," in Los Angeles. The nationwide focus of his newfound publicity was aided by the desire of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who increased his newspaper's coverage of Graham because of the strong anti-Communist fervor the young preacher showed in his sermons and his messages.

http://www.historyguy.com/biofiles/graham_billy.html

The Cold War dominated American life in the 1950s. With the escalation of Cold War tensions, fears abounded of nuclear war, red global domination, or, at least, that Christianity and the security of the nation were in danger of Communist infiltration. On many occasions, religious leaders expressed their understanding of the threats that America faced. The success that Conservative Protestants (including evangelist Billy Graham, religious editor Carl Henry, and F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover) had in presenting their anti-Communist message to countless Americans suggests that Conservative Protestantism played an influential role in the shaping of American Cold War culture. One way better to understand this process is to probe the ways Conservative Protestantism drew motivation and legitimation from dominant American expectations that were religious, anti-Communist, and masculine. Of course, many Liberal Protestants, Catholics, and Jews likewise represented these dominant American expectations. What sets Conservative Protestants apart was the profusion of voices that upheld a more consistent and rigorous anti-Communist message in public culture.

<snip>

As the Cold War germinated in post-World War II America, Billy Graham, brimming with Evangelical fervour, anti-Communism, and manliness, began to make his mark. In The Culture of the Cold War, Stephen J. Whitfield noted Graham's influence, stating "he probably remained the most consistently and deeply admired American of his time."(41) According to William McLoughlin, Graham's "popularity was part of the grass-roots reaction to the whole traumatic postwar experience," the desire for reaffirmation of ideals and values that had given "meaning and order to American life in the past."(42) In 1957, one commentator claimed that his "authoritarianism" and "decisiveness" appealed to many revival listeners.(43) Beginning in 1947, Graham's revival campaigns held in major cities and covered by print, and frequently by radio and television, had a far-reaching impact. While his focus was on a message of sin and salvation, he often highlighted the perilous threat of Communism; it was a vehicle to share Christ and state the necessity for repentance of sins and thus, revival.(44) The use of fear and anxiety was genuine, for Graham listed the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Communist menace as the three major crises that America faced.(45)

<15> At the 1949 Los Angeles crusade, where Graham first received national exposure, he declared that "Communism is not only an economic interpretation of life - Communism is a religion that is inspired, directed and motivated by the Devil himself who has declared war against Almighty God."(46) To a Washington revival audience, he stated that this anti-God and anti-Christ "fanatical religion" was seeking to undermine "this great America of ours."(47) In North Carolina, he explained that in times of darkness Communists were effective propagandists, promising hope and the building of a better world; it was disturbing that when Communism demanded conversion many would chose this "counterfeit of Christianity."(48) Responding soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis, he warned Christianity Today readers that "in spite of a few recent reverses, the Communists have been winning during the last 15 years."(49)

http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/popcoldwarprint.html

the LGBT, teachers, unions, anti-war, and others under the bus.

Mmm, changelicious.

He's a man of his times which means more conservative than I like but I think his heart is in the right place.

But honestly I never understood all the presidents calling on him I don't really rank him as any great counselor or theologian.

Then, well, his heart is in not so right a place.

Somehow it's become de rigeur for a sitting President to do certain hokey, folksy lowbrow things or be considered "stuck up."