Why aren't John McCain and the GOP's links to the Reverend Moon and his Unification Church dominating the news cycle?  The Moon story has income tax fraud, adultery, reincarnation, violence, billions of dollars spent to keep money-losing right-wing institutions afloat AND hilarious video of the Reverend Moon being crowned as "the New Messiah" in the Senate Office Building in a ceremony sponsored and organized by one of John McCain's chief advisors.  We're talking a coronation with scarlet fur robes and big gold CROWNS -- big ol' Burger King hats made of precious metal and ornamented with valuable gems.

This story has EVERYTHING!  Why aren't we seeing footage of it 24/7?

I have no jokes left to tell about the Rev. Moon, publisher of the Washington Times and sponsor of the Bush family. As the story grows increasingly lurid, wretched and morally objectionable, I often feel like Elliot Gould as the detective in Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye: "Nobody cares but me." Well, or me and Ed Brayton.

But then a hero columnist like the Houston Chron's Rick Casey comes along with this deadpan bombshell: "Did Bush sip Moon's 'holy juice'?"

Jeremiah Wright? Come on.

The Moonies have just trumpeted the latest delegation of their dreaded leader, Sun Myung Moon, to the Bush presidential library in College Station, TX. The occasion: a statesmanlike party Moon was throwing in D.C., from April 28 to May 2, 2008, celebrating his dreams of influencing world events and burying Jesus Christ.

The host: George H.W. Bush.

Jeremiah Wright? Come on.

Thanks to DarkSyd's excellent diaries, we've already had the pleasure of meeting Sun Myung Moon, the mad '70s cult leader whose billions bought him a ludicrous seat at the table of the Right coalition.

Now I want you to meet his deputy, Chung Hwan Kwak. Mr. Kwak is the corporate official directly in charge of the conservative Washington Times and UPI. Here he is with the Bushes:

This is from a Korean news show. A reporter was touring Kwak's office, and the cult leader proudly showed him this photo, which the camera zoomed in on. (We'll come back later to this fascinating picture, which has just become public knowledge.)

Cross posted at a Arevolutionofone.net.

Beyond the pure insanity of a nutty cult leader having the influence that Reverend Moon has, there are so many things so very wrong here I hardly know where to begin. But I'll force myself to start with what's been in the news recently. And I'll do it briefly because, as I've said before, this topic has been discussed to death in the corporate media. And now that I think about it, it's not that it's been discussed so much, but how it's been discussed, as an endless 20 second loop, that's the problem.

Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right, and Built an American Kingdom. By John Gorenfeld (Order here)

I had a chance to ask John a few questions and post his newest video report (King of America -- Broken in parts 1 and 2 below) on Daily Kos. John is available in comments, West Coast time permitting, to chat with you about the cult of Moon and its seemingly unending influence on the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

DarkSyde (DS): Given recent media interest in religious/political  connections, or even before, how does the right-wing expect to get away with being so closely tied into someone as controversial as Moon without greater coverage or exposure to the public?

John Gorenfeld: You know, I would bet you that fewer than five percent of Americans know that the Washington Times, this newspaper that is constantly quoted in the conservative media sphere, is published by Sun Myung Moon. When I tell regular people—the ones old enough to remember Moon—they're horrified.

Washington journalists, though, are another story. They have a tin ear for hypocrisy, and working in D.C., they get so out of touch with reality they don't blink when Moon shows up at Washington Times dinner parties and raves about replacing Jesus Christ with himself. And they don't bother to inform the heartland.

There used to be plenty of Washington Post reports about the conservative/Moon alliance. But through sheer shamelessness, the Right just kept on keeping on until the media lost interest. Now everyone I talk to at big media outlets thinks Moon is a stale story, even though he's as significant a figure as Rupert Murdoch or George Soros in current American politics. "Oh, it's that '70s cult thing, we've covered it already."

But '70s Moon is not nearly as interesting as '00s Moon, who is touring the planet with the president's brother Neil. What does a cult leader have to do to get some coverage these days? It was like pulling teeth finding a media outlet that would report his coronation on Capitol Hill.

DS: When I was a kid, this guy was considered a frightening cult leader and his followers brainwashed victims in need of deprogramming. Next thing I know he's pals with some of the most powerful and mainstream conservative leaders, what happened in between?

John Gorenfeld: Moon is the kind of horror that only Richard Nixon could unleash.

To be a really great 1970s cult leader, you had to have a mad plan, but Moon's vision made the rest look like amateurs. He had his sights on befriending the president (through astroturf rallies—"God Forgives Richard Nixon!"), infiltrating Congress (by deploying pretty girls to warm up Hill staffers) and then somehow...becoming the leader of the United States.

Various conservatives, including a Nixon aide, began to see a useful ally. I even found a letter from a young Karl Rove to RNC head George Bush, gleefully mentioning Moon's Freedom Leadership Foundation, in a list of right-wing youth groups who were mobilizing to win the debate on campus.

But it wasn't until 1982 that Moon hit upon his best idea yet: create The Washington Times. Overnight he became the VIP who published Reagan's favorite newspaper.

And since then, the paper has lost $3 billion, more or less loyally pushing the conservative message into the mainstream. Most recently its journalism has been credited by the ACLU with virtually inventing the Minutemen by blowing up their numbers to ridiculous proportions; it has launched fabulous tales about Saddam's WMDs being spirited to Syria by Russian agents, and Iraqis who wanted the war to start so bad that they would "commit suicide if the bombing didn't start."

John Gorenfeld's book on the empire of Rev. Sun Myung Moon is out today.

What Congressional investigators in the 1970s called "the Moon organization" has played a malevolent role in American politics since the 1960's.  And yet politicians from both parties (but mostly Republicans), and religious, academic and media  leaders who really should know better, have taken Moon's largess, lent their good names to his enterprizes and looked the other way as his South Korea based agency interfered in American public life. (There is even a Moon/Farrakhan connection.)

People of Daily Kos,

While many of you here deny that you are a member of a cult, I freely embrace it.  I can say without hesitation that I only feel safe and happy when part of a mindless, ant-like collective that follows its leader without questions or complaints.  

I really don't know what the problem with that is.   But apparently some of you take umbrage at being called part of a cult.   Weird.

Well, let me set you straight about a few things below the fold.

Recently it's been in the news that a group calling itself "Anonymous" has targeted the Church of Scientology (religion or cult, flip a coin) for distributed denial-of-service attacks, server cracking, and other general harassment. One private communications forum I was on featured people gleefully presenting a 69 megabyte compressed collection of their supposedly "secret" files, while another denizen growled that hackers in the group should "go after their financials".

The latest press release from Anonymous, processed through a voice synthesizer, lists the many apparent sins of Scientology and ends with the ominous Sweeney Todd-like statements: "We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us."

Seven years ago this month, two of the most controversial figures in American public life were busy ramping-up what they called the "Million Family March" -- that would occur just two weeks before the 2000 presidential election. I broke the story of the strange alliance of Rev. Sun Myung Moon and Louis Farrakhan in Salon.com, an event that was soon forgotten in the wake of the dramatic  conclusion of the 2000 election. The event was not a "million" scale event, and some scheduled speakers and performers were no-shows, perhaps because of this expose. But it was nevertheless a strange and noteworthy example of the way that complicated, and significant political currents course through public life, even today.

While Farrakhan has faded from public life, Moon continues to actively influence American politics and public life as a major figure of the religious right.

I am posting my entire Salon.com story on the flip.

George H. W. Bush 41, who "strongly believes in the mission" of Sun Myung Moon, will help the conservative movement and Bush family’s sugar daddy promote two major deceptions when the former president is scheduled to give the keynote address at the Washington Times 25th anniversary bash this Thursday, May 17.

Judging by a similar event held 5 years ago, we can expect Bush and other speakers to promote the frame that the Washington Times is somehow "independent" of Moon and his plans to manipulate the political direction of America as part of his long sought goal to subdue the planet. The speakers will also, as Dr. Laura did five years ago when she toasted Moon and his propaganda unit, peddle the idea that somehow, almost miraculously, the paper has survived despite it critics.

Both of these views are misleading and we will show why below the fold. As a bonus we will document that Bush’s own spokesperson has stated that Bush 41, who has repeatedly sold the name, honor and prestige of the Presidency of the United States to Moon, "strongly believes in the mission" of Sun Myung Moon.

Why is Bush the Elder kowtowing to Reverend Moon and the Unification Church again?  Here's why, according to an article in Mother Jones

Next month the Washington Times, the conservative newspaper with close ties to every Republican administration since Reagan, celebrates its 25th anniversary.  Former President George H.W. Bush will be the headliner.

And the former President deserves the honor.  Barbara Bush ought to get a rousing cheer as well.  The two of them have been beating the bushes for Reverend Sun Myung Moon for years.

For the Washington Times extravaganza on May 17, Bush will appear in the National Building Museum’s monumental Great Hall.  Moon, resplendent as always, will deliver the Founder’s Address.

Consortium News has a new article out about the incredible amounts of gold and treasure looted from occupied Asia during WWII and how it shaped both post-war Japan AND the right-wing politics here in the US.  While it isn't talked about much, it was decided by General MacArthur to use the loot to help finance the emergence of Japan's democracy.  It also isn't mentioned to much that many of the key figures of Japan's WWII military government went on to because important post-war politicians in Japan's democracy.  This same group has dominated Japan's politics ever since, reflected in the fact that almost every single Prime Minister since 1956 has been a member of the the LPD.

In case you have not been following the story, a pastor along with members of Sun Myung Moon’s "church" have plead guilty to poaching protected baby leopard sharks. There is audio(link below) of a sermon in which the pastor, Kevin Thompson, gives details of the poaching project and describes how he personally told Moon about the operation. He said Moon got excited and wanted to put "20 boats" into the effort and that Moon even drew up plans for the operation.

The Unification Church is paying 500 grand into a fund to protect the sharks as part of an agreement to avoid prosecution.

The first dispatch by AP reported that the sermon clearly shows Moon was implicated by the pastor. Then a second, shorter AP edited version, the one which is the most widely circulated, scrubbed any mention of the sermon or its contents and only quotes Moon’s spinners claiming Moon had no knowledge of the "operation" - something shown to be false by AP’s own earlier reporting.

details on the flop

In what would be the makings of a stellar episode of "The World’s Stupidest Criminals" - were it not such a sickening crime - Kevin Thompson, the Unification Church minister who was sentenced last week for poaching thousands of protected baby leopard sharks, told his congregation details of the crime and then posted the sermon on the church’s website.

In the sermon, Thompson implicated his "messiah" Sun Myung Moon in the crime saying Moon wanted to expand the operation and admitted the funds were used to support church activities.

Join me on the flop for links to audio of the sermon and a tad of information on Moon's history of flaunting the law.

Item: The 92,000 acre ranch is on the west edge of the world's largest aquifer.

Item: Paraguay is now photographing all visitors, using a system provided by South Korea.

Item: The Moon Unification Church has made huge land purchases in the same area as the projected Bush purchase. The USA is building a huge airport and military base in the area, called a CSL, at Mariscal Estigarribia, (See map) to protect Brasilian natural gas fields 150 miles away. No one else in the area would let them do that.

David Brooks' claim :

NYT Columnist David Brooks recently dismissed the notion that the Bushes are close to the Reverend Moon.

John Gorenfeld's rebuttal :

"Here they are blowing out birthday candles for Moon's wife. (Click for uTube video.)"

It just doesn't get any better than this. Now, I suppose this is typical behavior from Brooks - at least it was the last time I bothered to pay any attention to him - but the real question here concerns why the New York Times continues to debase its reputation by publishing such sloppy drivel.

Well, one reason is because they would have to admit they have helped him. ...please continue reading.