You may have heard of Rev. John Hagee, the McCain supporter who said God created Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its homosexual "sins."   Well now meet Rev. Rod Parsley, the televangelist megachurch pastor from Ohio who hates Islam.  According to David Corn of Mother Jones, Parsley has called on Christians to wage war against Islam, which he considers to be a "false religion."  In the past, Parsley has also railed against the separation of church and state, homosexuals, and abortion rights, comparing Planned Parenthood to Nazis. 

John McCain actively sought and received Parsley's endorsement in the presidential race.  McCain has called Parsley "a spiritual guide," and he hasn't said whether he shares Parsley's vicious anti-Islam views.  That's because the mainstream media refuses to ask.  And so, we've taken matters into our own hands, joining Mother Jones to present the truth about McCain's pastor.

Since the media won't question McCain about his deeply bigoted pastor, it's up to you to call attention to this issue.  Make McCain's pastor problem a major story by forwarding this video to your family, friends, and colleagues.

We can't let McCain get away with aligning himself with a religious leader who's called for an all-out war on Islam, someone who draws no distinctions between Muslims and violent Islamic extremists.  Now is the crucial time to act.

How is it possible for us to be entering a recession while buyout billionaires like Henry Kravis saved $96 million through tax loopholes in 2006 alone? That's just one buyout billionaire, in one year, making use of one loophole! Just think how much these private equity crooks are costing taxpayers who are already battling financial hardships and home foreclosures.

Our earlier War on Greed films garnered over 350,000 views and a lot of attention from The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The New York Post, not to mention the Private Equity Council. Such wonderful feedback made us realize that now is a crucial time to connect the dots between buyout billionaires and everyday Americans suffering through this recession. And in talking with many of you, we thought a short, animated video could be a great means of conveying the gross misconduct of Henry Kravis, KKR, and the policies of buyout exploiters. So Paris, Lee Stranahan, and the team went to work to bring you our first animated video.

Now for the serious part. Join over 18,000 people who have already signed our petition demanding our presidential candidates close the Henry Kravis tax loophole. Then, please send this film along to ten people. Make sure Larry the Loophole is seen by friends, relatives, and schoolmates through Facebook, MySpace-the works! We already started spreading our message yesterday outside the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, when we joined the SEIU to present Kravis with the "Loophole of the Year" Award.

Last week, journalist David Sirota wrote, "As the facts trickle out about the private equity scam, you can bet public pressure for change is going to start building." Yes, we've presented the facts here with animated satire and humor, but our hope is that this will allow us to reach tens of thousands of people together.

By the way, our Condi Must GO video was a smashing success. Not only was it the #1 Video on YouTube News and Politics, but we received over 70,000 signatures for our petition. However, we still need more to reach our goal. Help us send Condi packing by sending Condi Must GO to all of your friends to sign.

It is deeply detrimental to the longterm interests of democracy when Democrats praise and support FOX News. This would be true regardless of who that Democrat is, but it's particularly heinous when Terry McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is singing their praises.

"Let me congratulate FOX," McAuliffe said this past week, "because you were the first ones to call [the Pennsylvania primary] for Hillary Clinton." McAuliffe, who is also chairing Clinton's Presidential committee, actually echoed the FOX mantra by calling them "fair and balanced." What is so dangerous about McAuliffe's praise is that FOX is now using his words as a TV ad to prove just how fair and balanced they are. The rest of us know the truth.

Jonathan put together this video as a reminder of how exceedingly unfair and imbalanced FOX actually is. These are just few gems to let McAuliffe and others know that FOX is the foe, has always been the foe, and will continue to be the foe of accurate reporting.

Please help us in this quest by sharing what you think have been the worst FOX moments in the comments section below. We will send the list to McAuliffe as a firm reminder that he must not applaud FOX!

Thanks to a new report from ABC News, we now know that Condoleezza Rice led White House meetings authorizing torture that were so detailed, "the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed."

How can we express the terrible shock we have felt from the fact that our government is using torture? How can we express what so many of us are thinking—that it is absolutely appalling to know that our representatives are implementing barbaric instruments of torture as policy? How do we express our moral outrage?

Perhaps more importantly, how do we begin to take steps towards ending this heinous crime?  Sign the petition and demand Secretary of State Rice to resign.

Our allies at True Majority, USAction, and Democracy for America have launched a campaign to start calling out our leaders by focusing on Condoleezza Rice. No, she is not the President.  But we want to call attention to the fact that the Secretary of State called for torture when she was National Security Adviser. 

This is our campaign to get all three Presidential nominees to call for Rice's resignation.  Accountability must start with her, especially now that she's being mentioned as a potential Vice Presidential candidate.  We want to push all the Presidential candidates on this issue.  They need to make a public stance: Condi Must Go!

The cost of the Iraq War is a grave issue.  We are committed to spreading awareness about the devastating financial toll the war is taking on each and every one of us, let alone our economy.

$3 trillion. That is what Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates the war will cost our country. Make no mistake, this $3 trillion bill is crippling our economy and causing our Iraq recession. To put this colossal amount of cash into perspective, we've designed a game to help people really understand what $3 trillion dollars can buy.

Get ready to go on a 3 Trillion Dollar Shopping Spree!

When the war was already hurting our economy two years ago, President Bush announced that Americans should go shopping—a brilliant plan to remedy our ailing economy. So follow the President's advice in this virtual shopping bonanza and rack up a $3 trillion tab like he has in real life. All you have to do is stroll down through our online store, add items to your cart for yourself or friends, and check out. It's just that easy!

Whether you buy serious gifts like healthcare for all Americans or frivolous ones like building the world's tallest building, we hope you'll begin to see just how far $3 trillion could go and help others understand the cost of this war.

This "game" is designed to build further awareness, and we need your help to make that happen, just as you have done on previous successful campaigns from FOX Attacks to the War on Greed to Hurricane Katrina recovery.

Please buy gifts for your all your friends and loved ones, and send them e-mails to let them know you've found better ways to spend our nation's money than the President. We need to help Americans understand the war's economic toll.

Robert Lopez served 8 years in our military, fighting in Iraq as a tank commander.  He was told he'd get his whole education bill paid for when he got out of the service, but like so many others, Mr. Lopez has faced the bleak reality of a government that has turned its back on its veterans.

That is why Senators Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel proposed the new GI Bill, which would bring back WWII-style standards of providing vets with full tuition, room and board.  And that is why 51 senators have signed on, including 9 Republicans like John Warner, giving this GI Bill tremendous bipartisan support.

But it isn't enough.  Faced with unprecedented filibusters, the only way to ensure Senate passage of the GI Bill is to get 60 co-sponsors. So far, John McCain has refused.  The same McCain who insists he supports our troops.  The same McCain who is voting lockstep with the Bush administration (who have also resisted this bill).  We need to get John McCain to lead — to sign now and signal to other Republican leaders that we should be strongly behind our vets.

Robert Lopez thinks John McCain ought to stand in his shoes to know how difficult it is to be a vet and have to pay staggering education costs.  THIS is your call to arms.  Pass the video along and implore your friends to sign the petition.

Vote Vets, WesPAC, and Brave New Films feel passionately about giving our veterans the support they rightly deserve.  Our government owes our troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan the opportunity to receive full educational benefits.  These patriots have fought hard for our government; it's time our government started fighting hard for them.

Every year, dedicated high-school students are denied the chance to attend college, based solely on their undocumented status.  These young patriots are doctors who will never get the chance to heal us, teachers who won't be able to educate our children, police and firefighters who will never be able to protect us—all because their dreams have been deferred.

All three presidential hopefuls co-sponsored the federal DREAM Act, yet it has never been made law. The DREAM Act would enable states to grant in-state tuition to these hardworking immigrant students, making higher education (and eventually citizenship) a real possibility.

We need to put pressure on all three presidential candidates to commit to securing America's future by enacting the federal DREAM Act in their first 100 days of office.

Sign the petition so that we can show our elected officials that the dreams of students must not be sacrificed to the anti-immigrant, anti-American status quo.

The fight for social justice is a marathon. Nothing is more important than finding ideas, events, and people that fan the flame, encourage more efforts and raise the bar. Just this morning, I received this video of Bobby Kennedy speaking and was inspired, moved, and excited. The possibilities, the ideas, the ability to make change. They are historical, they are today, and they are tomorrow. The words are particularly relevant to our War on Greed campaign.

Take a look. I think you will find it a source of encouragement.

No surprise that FOX has been at it again: smearing, distorting, attacking Obama.  What is infuriating and requires IMMEDIATE ACTION is that so many in the media have been catching the FOX virus and spreading it.  By way of a cure, we bring you the next installment in our highly successful FOX Attacks! series.  Together, we have battled them effectively, halted their fake debates, and put pressure on Bill O'Reilly for on his attacks on homeless vets.  And so far, over 6 million people have seen our FOX Attacks!

A special thanks to all of you who contributed to the tickers for this film!  Your contributions made this video possible.  You turned this into a collaborative filmmaking process, declaring our collective outrage over FOX's propaganda. If you didn't get the chance to contribute this time around, you can put your message to Murdoch in the next FOX Attacks! film for a contribution of $199.  Space is very limited though, we can only include 25 messages.

Of course, Obama isn't the only Democratic nominee that FOX and their ilk have gone after in this Presidential race. Chris Matthews, once a Roger Ailes hire, has been demonizing Hillary Clinton every chance he gets.  Our friends at Media Matters have more on how Matthews is modeling himself after Bill O'Reilly.  With your support we can and will continue the fight.

PETITION DELIVERY UPDATE:  Watch as speakers from MoveOn.Org and FAIR explain why traditional media should not parrot FOX, followed by the petition delivery by members and supporters of Brave New Films and MoveOn.Org at NBC headquarters in NYC.

Director Robert Greenwald will be speaking about using web video as a powerful tool in sparking citizens and policymakers into action and creating change at this months Internet Advocacy Roundtable.

The event will be from 1-3pm on Thursday, March 20th in Washington D.C.

Address:
Center for American Progress Action Fund
1333 H Street, NW
10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

Please RSVP if you'd like to come, seats are limited. 

There is no issue more serious then the continued militarization of our country and our culture. We have seen this and exposed this from Uncovered to Iraq for Sale to Fox Attacks Iran.

But right now, we want to call attention to someone who not only embraces the song of war, he literally sings it!  We bring you that Oldie but Baddie: John McCain sings "Bomb Iran."

The mainstream press is absorbed in the presidential race -- the latest poll numbers, the in-fighting between Obama and Clinton -- while we seek to expose the true story humming just beneath the surface (yes, this calls for some major puns in a matter very serious... sometimes satire can be the most effective way to reach people).

Take a moment to spread this video. Let everyone see firsthand (with a little help from our composers) that the senator embraces war in a dangerous and irresponsible manner.

Since the traditional media has obsessively focused on McCain's alleged liaison with Vicki Iseman and smearing The NY Times, we felt compelled to take action. Jason, Phillip, and Dallas raced to the editing room, turned off the phones, locked the door, and focused on the real issue about McCain's lobbyist ties.

It's not a pretty picture. But here's our chance to get the truth out there for everyone to see.

With inspiration from the insightful blogs of FireDogLake's Jane Hamsher, Christy Hardin Smith, and Marcy Wheeler, we found footage and music to show the story not being told.

We use humor, we use pop culture, we use McCain's insistent use of the word "friends!" We hope you will send it along to your friends, foes, and media outlets.

John McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, and yet he said "I'm the only one the special interests don't give any money to."

Sign the petition demanding McCain return the millions of dollars raised by lobbyists.

We at Brave New Films couldn't be more proud one of our own has won the much coveted Maria Leavey award! We were just notified that after counting all the votes, Jim Gilliam will be the recipient of this award for unsung progressive heroes.

The award will be presented and Jim will give a speech during the closing luncheon at the Take Back America 2008 conference on March 19th.  

Congratulations Jim! 

100 years of war -- Not a joke.
Singing bomb bomb bomb Iran -- Out of tune, and NOT funny

We laugh, we yell, we worry.  But, thankfully, we live in a time and a world where we can do something.

You stopped two FOX run debates using the FOX Attacks videos to spread the word, change people's opinions, and influence the media's story.   You helped get advertisers to pull ads from Michael Savage's hateful radio program using the video.  You spread the word about Rudy Giuliani on 9/11 with the investigative videos about the faulty radios and command center, and we saw how the public reacted.

And now, while Clinton and Obama are focused on winning the nomination, we have a job to do.

We can't let the media continue its love affair with John McCain.   We can't let people see a straight shooter when what we really have is a shoot first, ask questions later kind of guy.  We've seen this movie before, and we can't let the next few months pass by by without telling the real story.  We will use humor at times, but this is a very serious campaign to use the horrors of war and the facts of the Iraq recession to reach people.

Will you invest a dollar for every year you think John McCain will keep us in Iraq?  A dollar now could quite possibly save us from the decades of "more wars" McCain has promised. 

Make an investment

At a time when all television spots are fundraised around helping a particular candidate win, there is a critically important role for online communications to play.  We can reach hundreds of thousands online, instantly.  Wired just did an article about this.

Brave New Films was on the case over a year ago with The REAL McCain, and it looked like America was through with him after that.  But now he's back and more dangerous than ever.  We must act now!

Now is not the time for progressives to be silent. With Clinton and Obama battling each other we MUST start telling the story of McCain and his support for war.

We have been barraged with folks asking us to take action. And we have.

In less than week, Jason, Leda, Philip and Lissette put together these two fantastic short videos. And we have a major BNF strategic campaign to reach hearts and minds.

We need $100,000 immediately (like in the next week), so we can continue making these high impact videos, full-time, around the clock.

Can you chip in $50? We've got to start now. Make an investment here.

While we're using a little HUMOR in our opening effort, the war is deadly serious, the deaths to Americans and to Iraqis. We have seen and experienced the terrible pain and suffering. But our job right now is to reach millions of people who have erected emotional walls to any more painful news of death and destruction. So we went to the personal, the cost to each and everyone of us. And we did it by hacking the techniques of Madison Ave, a joke that gets the attention, and then makes the point.

We're very excited about this campaign, so excited that we wanted to get you involved now before we even have a proper website set up for it. Please post a comment below with your ideas for future videos, a campaign song, a cartoon, and additional ways to get the word out.

Let's keep working together to tell America about John McCain's vision for our country: Less jobs, and more wars. I've got a hunch Joe Scarborough is going to regret ever making that joke.

Bill O'Reilly refuses to apologize for his repeated assertions that there are no homeless vets.  Watch it here.

Bill never served in the military, and he makes more than $9 million a year. It is unsurprising that he's out of touch with the plight of the 200,000 homeless veterans living in America.  So we found them, we videotaped them, and we brought a few to O'Reilly's doorstep in NYC.

Then he refused to even let them in the building, and proceeded to mock them on national television... for not watching FOX News!

Homeless people frequently don't have cable, Bill.  Something you might learn if you talked to them.

America's veterans do NOT deserve to be insulted and humiliated any longer.  Sign the open letter demanding an apology from O'Reilly, and pass it on to your friends.

Thanks to the casting sensibility of Arianna Huffington, we learned that John McCain has been channeling Dr. Strangelove!  Duly inspired, Phillip and our Issues 2008 team jumped into action, and 24 hours later, here's the video!

Pass it far and wide and pitch us your casting ideas for John McCain in the comments.

You did it!  What an amazing outpouring of intelligent, thoughtful letters, emails and calls to the Savage advertisers.

Already, four major companies have pulled out, and QUICKLY.   So savor your good work, and know that in fact your actions do make a difference.  You didn't just yell at your radio or TV. YOU DID SOMETHING, and it made a difference.

But here's something we didn't expect.  The USO is standing behind Michael Savage!  They refuse to pull their ads from his program.  

We’re shocked and disheartened by this.  We would have expected them to be the first to distance themselves from someone who is deliberately fanning the flames of hatred between Muslims and non-Muslims, putting the troops in even greater jeopardy.  How does this help the cause of America's servicemembers?

Please call John Hanson, spokesman for the USO, and let him know this is just not acceptable. (703) 908-6400

And, if you're a digger, digg this story.