Slowly, one by one, Democrats in Washington state have decided to jettison political campaign contributions given by J.Z. Knight, a self-proclaimed channeler of “Ramtha,” who Knight tells followers is the spirit of a 35,000-year-old warrior.
In Washington state Democrats’ curiously slow march away from Knight’s foul and bigoted statements – video-recorded public remarks in which Knight shouts slurs and obscenities directed at Catholics and Mexicans, suggesting that Mexicans are “poison” to America, that “every G—damn Mexican family is a Catholic,” and that they are “not worthy of conscious thought” – local politicians have slinked away to leave Obama and the DNC holding the bag.
Knight is also seen and heard telling students that “all gay men were once Catholic women” and making an ominous threat to the Catholic Church that “we will come on you in a terror.”
Pres. Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee now have the dishonorable distinction of being the only parties still holding onto tainted cash taken from Knight, who is now a pariah among Democrats.
In the current election cycle, Knight has given nearly $100,000 to Democratic organizations at the federal level — $5,000 to Obama’s general re-election campaign fund, $40,800 to the Obama Victory Fund and $50,800 to the Democratic National Committee. Knight also sits on Obama’s re-election steering committee.
The only public statements made by the Obama campaign to date are that they have no plans to return any of Knight’s donations. No comment has been offered by DNC officials on the matter.
Meanwhile, back in Washington state, Republicans took a closer look at the moves made by local Democrats to distance themselves from Knight and are seeing cause for more outrage.
Last Friday, the first politico relenting to public pressure in the wake of the Ramtha scandal was State Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz. Pelz chose not to return Knight’s donations, but to redistribute $70,000 equally between the Anti-Defamation League and the Approve R-74 referendum campaign to ratify the state’s same-sex marriage law.
Unfortunately, it now appears that Pelz’s epiphany was less genuine than media reports should have given him credit for. According to a release Tuesday by the Washington State Republican Party. Republicans charge that Pelz is still pulling one over on voters by paying penance out of the State Democratic Party’s soft money PAC, not the hard money PAC that originally received Knight’s tainted money. It’s more than a semantic distinction, in the opinion of Republicans.
“Dwight knows as well as I do that giving up the $35,000 from the soft dollar account is nothing more than a ceremonial gesture,” said Washington State Republican Party Chairman Kirby Wilbur in the released statement. “That account is filled with big donations from unions, corporate entities, and PAC’s and can easily be replenished by any of those groups. The tainted money he took from Knight is still being used to directly help his candidates and his party, and it’s wrong.”
“Dwight [Pelz] is dancing with the devil, and in turn, so are his candidates,” Wilbur said.
Several other Democratic candidates in local races have slowly come to their own decisions to ditch their Ramtha dollars. After Pelz, state representative candidate Bruce Lachney told the media Monday he would channel the $3,600 his campaign had received from Knight and the Ramtha School of Enlighment into college scholarships.
On Tuesday, Denny Heck, candidate for U.S. Congress in the newly created 10th Congressional District, announced he would give his $3,500 to a charitable organization.
The final holdout among local Democrats had been Thurston County Commissioner Sandra Romero. Romero’s defense of Knight’s statements was strong as late as Monday when she still pleaded to The Olympian that the entire matter was a case of mistaken context:
Romero said a member of the Ramtha School warned her about the video circulating online before Tuesday’s commissioner meeting.
“They wanted to tell me that the rail against the Catholic Church had to do with … the pedophile priests … and the cover-up by some of the archdioceses,” Romero said. “That’s what they told me.”
Late Tuesday evening, Romero issued a statement that she, too, would give away the $3,600 she had received from Knight and her organization.
With so many Democrats dumping their campaign’s cash, who are the candidates Wilbur suggests are still doing the jitterbug with Beelzebub? It’s not hard to deduce that Wilbur may be suggesting that Democratic candidate for Washington state governor Jay Inslee features prominently on the Ramtha’s dance card. Inslee has been the prime beneficiary of his party’s hard money spending – 85 percent of all money spent totaling $1.68 million.
Still, if words can be used as a guide, Knight’s Ramtha does not have the same affinity for Inslee as he does for Obama. In fact, Ramtha is a very big Obama supporter, a fact evidenced by more than his ability to influence Knight to write big checks.
Shortly after Obama’s 2009 inauguration, Knight/Ramtha referred to Obama as the “black pope” in a channeled address published in the Ramtha School of Enlightenment newsletter:
“You have elected the last black pope, the last black pope of history. The seers of antiquity never knew what a president was. There was no such thing as a president. A superior, inspiring, spiritual leader was called a pope, so the seers saw in the lens of their future a black pope. He would be the runner to the end. He is called the last black pope.”
Knight/Ramtha also predict the apocalyptic destruction of the Earth and concurrent social chaos in the ashes:
“The social consciousness of this democracy will go into rebellion beginning this year, but its worst rebellion is happening the year that follows in the final collapse and destruction of the Earth coming in the beginning of 2012. The falling apart of the American society, as you know it, will be a falling apart because its citizenry is insecure, as there is no respect for the law. Not even the lawmakers who made the law respect the law. They will be held on the gallows as targets to say you should never do this again.”
We can, of course, conclude that Ramtha is not the sharpest crayon in the box if only on the basis that giving tens of thousands of dollars to elect candidates whose swearing in will come after the destruction of the Earth seems slightly less than logical.
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