Tag Archives: military religious freedom foundation

Mikey Weinstein Implicates Himself as Insane Conspiracy Theorist

While writing a recent diatribe on a rather meaningless topic, Michael “Mikey” Weinstein included this gem, saying:

Frank Gaffney is another insane conspiracy theorist who hallucinates about a massive magnitude of militant Islamists that are ready to seize control of the United States and impose a violent, backwards theocracy on all the good Christians.

Projection, hypocrisy, irony — you pick. For those that don’t see it, consider changing just the bold terms in Weinstein’s artful sentence:

Mikey Weinstein is another insane conspiracy theorist who hallucinates about a massive magnitude of militant Christians that are ready to seize control of the United States and impose a violent, backwards theocracy on all the good people.

Just change four words out of 37.  And its true.

Remember, Mikey Weinstein claims a “massive magnitude” of Christians (38 million, to be precise) is Read more

Progressive Religious Groups Had No Effect on Kavanaugh, Mikey Weinstein. Here’s Why.

While some have vaunted (or mocked) the power of the ‘religious bloc’ in American politics, the nomination and confirmation of now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was the latest insight into when that power appears to be ineffective.

On Wednesday, October 3rd, the National Council of Churches issued a statement calling for Kavanaugh’s nomination to be withdrawn. The NCC said its stance was because

Judge Kavanaugh exhibited extreme partisan bias and disrespect…[and] his testimony before the Judiciary Committee included several misstatements and some outright falsehoods.

Judge Kavanaugh’s [record] is troubling with regard to issues of voting rights, racial and gender justice, health care, the rights of people with disabilities, and environmental protections.

The NCC, according to it own website, has 38 “member communions” that “include more than 45 million people in over 100,000 congregations.” If you do the math, that’s nearly 14% of the entire US population.

Yet, despite this condemnation from Read more

MRFF’s John Compere Highlights Mikey Weinstein’s Bias

Michael “Mikey” Weinstein and his erstwhile research assistant Chris Rodda tend to get hot under the collar when someone (accurately) accuses their organization of bias and bigotry, but its hard to defend against that characterization when your own people are providing the evidence. Former Assembly of God “pastor” Joan Slish has been a frequent source of insider information, and now “disabled American veteran (Vietnam)” John Compere is the most recent to demonstrate his own organization’s bias.

In his most recent “article” for the MRFF (the point of which is irrelevant), Compere — who relies on quotations like some do thesis statements — closes with a quotation from Ronald Reagan that tells you everything you need to know about Mikey Weinstein and his MRFF:

“We were founded as a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. And so we must remain. Our very unity has been strengthened by our pluralism. We establish no religion is this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are and must remain separate. All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice a faith or not.”

Reagan gave that speech at least twice, with minor variations, to the Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast on 23 August 1984 and to the Congregation of Temple Hillel and Jewish Community Leaders on 26 October 1984.

Those are, indeed, Ronald Reagan’s words, given during campaign speeches in 1984 — but they are ripped from context. Despite Compere’s claim to their message, the speech is utterly anti-MRFF. Compere appears to quote the latter version of the speech, in which President Read more

Dissonance: Jewish War Veterans of USA to “Honor” Mikey Weinstein

Michael “Mikey” Weinstein will be speaking next week to a dinner for the Jewish War Veterans of America. In its press release, the local JWV spoke on behalf of the national organization when it said [emphasis added]:

The Jewish War Veterans of the United States…is…committed from its founding, to the elimination of all forms of bigotry…

Sounds fair enough, until they finished with [emphasis added]:

The JWV Department of Minnesota supports MRFF in the fight against religious bigotry and oppression within the ranks…

That’s like saying you support David Duke Read more

Study Says There Are No Atheists in Foxholes

A study entitled “Death, Trauma and God: The Effect of Military Deployments on Religiosity” was covered at the Economist, in which the authors noted

According to a working paper published this week by Resul Cesur, Travis Freidman and Joseph Sabia, a trio of economists in America, there is some truth to the adage that there are no atheists in foxholes. Or rather, wartime trauma often makes people turn to God.

The article refers to two different analyses conducted in the study, in which

They find compelling evidence that those who have served in combat zones and directly engaged the enemy are more likely to attend religious services regularly than are those who have not.

There is some degree of Read more

MRFF Loses Money for Second Year — but Mikey Weinstein Still Gets a Raise

For the second year in a row, Michael “Mikey” Weinstein’s Military Religious Freedom Foundation — the “charity” he started, operates, and for which he is the sole paid employee — continued to spend more than it brought in, according to its IRS filings for 2016 (the most recent available).

In 2016, Weinstein brought in $681,000, which is about $15,000 more than the prior year. The MRFF’s expenses ballooned to $715,000, putting Weinstein on the very red side of the ledger.

Of course, that’s somewhat academic when you’re running your own charity. For one thing, the MRFF is sitting on a large cash pile, though it dipped below $200,000 just this year.  Notably, too, the difference between the income and expenses is almost exactly equal to the raise Mikey Weinstein gave himself, from $275,000 in (total reported) compensation to $310,000.

While he could have trimmed his pay to operate within the budget, Mikey Weinstein gave himself a raise, from $264,000 in 2015 to $289,900 in 2016.  Put another way, about 43% of the MRFF’s donations go directly to Mikey Weinstein’s salary — leading media scrutiny to say he was “cashing in” based on an “unheard of” salary from those donations.

With that said, it has long been known that Mikey Weinstein appears to have other forms of indirect “compensation” from his charity besides Read more

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