Category Archives: politics

Capitalism, Jesus, conspiracy theories, and Bohemian Grove

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I have come to believe that there is no getting around the fact that capitalism is opposite everything that Jesus (and Moses and Mohammed and Buddha) taught. All the great religions are clear about one thing: It is evil to take the majority of the pie and leave what’s left for everyone to fight over. Jesus said that the rich man would have a very hard time getting into heaven. He told us that we had to be our brother’s and sister’s keepers and that the riches that did exist were to be divided fairly. He said that if you failed to house the homeless and feed the hungry, you’d have a hard time finding the pin code to the pearly gates.

The above is a quote from Michael Moore. Read the entire article here.

According to The Curious Capitalist:

The top 400’s share of the nation’s income went from 0.52% in 1992 to 1.31% in 2006—an even bigger increase than its share of taxes paid. When you chart the average tax rate paid by those in the top 400, the picture is nearly opposite.

Yet, even non-fundamentalist religious people continue to let the Republican Conservatives brainwash them into believing that somehow everyone else who is not them is an instrument of the devil. Despite Enron and Madoff and any number of smaller versions of these capitalist-inspired fiascos, there are people — people wealthy in neither money nor knowledge — who believe that the rich and powerful know what’s best for them.

Now, I’m a big fan on Dan Brown’s novels and just finished reading his latest, The Lost Symbol (which I read on my iphone with ereader). Being an eclectic agnostic brought up as a Catholic, I love Brown’s wild and well-documented speculations about hidden histories and mysteries. The Lost Symbol explores the influence of Masonic beliefs on our nation’s establishment (then and now).

But I know that, while Brown uses facts as his building blocks, he fits them together with the mortar of his imagination. One man’s conspiracy is another man’s frat party.

Which brings me to the stuff online about the Bohemian Grove gatherings, where smart powerful people dress up in costumes, light fires and fireworks, sing and enact a ritualistic “cremation of care”. What looks to me like a glorified frat party or boy scout fest is touted by the likes of Alex Jones as satanic ritual. If you want to see a conspiracy, you’ll figure out how to make it look like one.

I wish I had written down Dan Brown’s reflections on pagan rituals that described the drinking of blood and consumption of human flesh as an empowering and spiritual act — an act that gets translated daily into the Holy Communion of Christian churches.

Now, personally, I am not comfortable with secret societies of any kind, and the “old-boy” Bohemian Club makes me nervous, even though, as Daniel’s Free Speech Zone, describes:

For the last century, an elite group, called the “Bohemian Club,” has been gathering at the grove for a yearly retreat. The “Bohemians,” also called “Bohos” or “Grovers,” are an all-male pack of corporate, financial, military and government leaders. No women are allowed. The group has included every Republican president since Herbert Hoover. Both Bushes have been here; so have Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, and Collin Powell, as well as a horde of lesser-known Bohos. All together, some 2000 of them descend upon Sonoma County each summer in July and assemble in the depths of the dark forest to imbibe huge quantities of costly alcohol, to piss on the trees, and to let it all hang out for the duration of 16 days.

“Weaving spiders come not here,” is the club’s motto, meaning that they’re here to relax and not to negotiate business.

While not a “conspiracy theorist,” I, like Daniel, have a concern, as he expressed:

…given the context of today’s world and the role these men play in it, the form of the Cremation of Care ritual — the priests in hooded robes, the mythologem of human sacrifice — seems to symbolize the mindset of men who profit from war, chop up the forests, pollute the environment and scheme to privatize Social Security. The ritual most likely creates an fraternal atmosphere in which they can bond and set the stage for future cooperation in the exercise of evil.

That seems to be the essence of what the Bohemians bring out from the Grove and foist upon the rest of us.

I don’t believe that Jesus, if here today, would be a capitalist, a conspirator, or an “old-boy” networker. He certainly would not work on Wall Street, although he might be forced by circumstance to work at Wal-Mart.

He would be out advocating for a single payer health care system. And if he tried to run for office, he would be eaten alive by the far Right/eous. [pagan ritual reference intended]

show the right the door

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There is no common table at which to sit with the Right. There is no compromise with the Right. To them, a show of compromise by their opponents isn’t seen as an invitation to further discussion and common progress. It isn’t seen as civility.

To them, it’s simply a sign of weakness, the baring of one’s naked throat to their waiting teeth.

The above from the end of a post here.

Their votes didn’t put this administration into office, and they will do all they can to sabotage the agenda that did put this administration into office.

President Obama and the progressive Democrats need to show the Right/eous the door — politely but firmly.

oh boy, oh boy!!

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Maureen Dowd’s column in Saturday’s NY Times calls a spade a spade (no, this is not a racial slur).

She writes:

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.

[snip]

Now he’s at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension. Even if he and the coterie of white male advisers around him don’t choose to openly acknowledge it, this president is the ultimate civil rights figure — a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe.

For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.

Dowd’s piece gives a little history of the South’s failed efforts to fight on the wrong side of national moral issues since the Civil War.

Obama, as an educated, eloquent, and erudite mixed race black man is the redneck’s nightmare come true.

For the rest of us, he’s our last great hope for rescuing our country from the lying maws of the stupid, selfish, and snide.

Is this how the moral Germans felt?

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While Hitler was spewing his hateful lies and masterminding the most horrific manipulations of all times, the good and powerless German people who understood and feared what he was trying to do must have felt the way that some of us do these days. Nothing we say or write or do seems to deter the crooks and liars who are so fiercely opposing the kind of Universal Health Care system that would save lives and ultimately save money as well. The right-wing conservatives are railroading to its certain death the ability of this country to keep its citizens healthy.

How viciously ironic that the Right/eous portray President Obama as a Hitler figure, when it is they, his opponents, who are copying Hitler’s tactics of spreading distortions and disinformation, manipulating and inventing language that totally misrepresents the truth and stirs up the most primal fears of those who adhere to the right-wing’s philosophy and values

This from an article in The Nation: Reverse Reverse Nazism and the War on Universal Healthcare

The spinmeisters of the right have done quite a job with what used to be straightforward English etymology. Thanks to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, “integration” was inverted to mean “takeover” and “colorblindness” is code for abandoning the advances of the civil rights movement, which itself is synonymous with an “industry” of exclusion. It’s no surprise, then, that whenever a piece of progressive legislation comes to the table, the same manipulations come into play from right-wing pundits who shamelessly profess their desire to see the Obama presidency fail. Thus it is that America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 is being turned upside down as the neat equivalent of Germany’s Bankrupting Forced Death Act of 1939.

Like the Nazis, the Right/eous are playing to the fears of people are afraid that change will somehow mean that they will get less because someone else will get more. They are the same people who were afraid of integration and feminism, and they follow the leaders who validate their fears and keep them riled up and misinformed.

From the article cited above (read the entire piece here):

But if you listen as though deciphering pig Latin and realize that this demographic is speaking from a well-managed, near-hypnotic looking-glass world where every word from the mouth of a Democrat (or a liberal, or a Latina, or a Canadian) is a lie, a betrayal… then it all makes sense. Their world truly has been turned inside out, by the election, by the economy, by the precarious conditions that threaten us all. But for those whose sense of identity has been premised on a raced, masculinist, conservative Christian hierarchy of American power, the world must seem even more emotionally terrifying than any actual facts would indicate.

I am afraid. They are afraid. If the Health Care legislation doesn’t pass, I think ALL of our fears will be realized. They will get less of what they already have. I will be OK because I have health benefits from a government job, but my adult son and the millions (yes, I said MILLIONS) like him will still go without.

This is the time for strong moral leadership to step up and take some risks and vehemently press for a Universal Health Care System that, when enacted, will alleviate all of our fears.

I am inclined to ask here, “What Would Jesus Do?” Certainly not support the profiteers of the for-profit health care industry.

C’mon President Obama. Rise to the position of leadership that we put you on and press for the changes we so desperately need.

a time to disbelieve

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This quote from Talking Points Memo.

Rightwing fearmongers and demagogues
thrive only to the extent the mainstream media
believes they’re thriving.

It’s all a matter of persistent marketing, isn’t it? Say something loud enough and often enough and pretty soon it will be believed.

The leaders of the Right/eous (both political and religious) know and use this strategy well. And, in many cases these days, various Right/eous factions have banded together to strategically defeat a health care plan for America that will both save lives and money.

While there is evidence from other countries regarding how well a single payer national health plan can and does work there is no evidence showing that it won’t work here in America. There is only the persistent and consistent marketing message from Right/eous telling us to believe that it won’t work and that any health care reform has to come about very slowly.

What is this, “faith-based politics”?

The TPM piece cited above ends with this:

Sometimes reform has to occur in a big way, everything or nothing, if it’s to happen at all. That’s the way it is with health care reform at this stage. Every moving piece is related to every other one. That’s also why a public option is necessary.

So forget the authoritative sources. Mobilize and organize. We can get comprehensive, meaningful health care reform if we push hard enough. And we must.

we’ve been punked; wake up Mr. Pres.

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Now, politics is the art of the possible. Mr. Obama was never going to get everything his supporters wanted.

But there’s a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line. It seems as if there is nothing Republicans can do that will draw an administration rebuke: Senator Charles E. Grassley feeds the death panel smear, warning that reform will “pull the plug on grandma,” and two days later the White House declares that it’s still committed to working with him.

It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.

Indeed, no sooner were there reports that the administration might accept co-ops as an alternative to the public option than G.O.P. leaders announced that co-ops, too, were unacceptable.

The above from Paul Krugman’s piece in the Times.

C’mon, Mr. Pres. You can’t be that naive, and I hope that you’re not as wishy washy as you’re starting to seem.

C’mon, Mr. Pres. Time to conjure up FDR’s ghost and put some spine in your stand. He might not have looked like he had it, but he had it when it counted.

We voted for change when we voted to you, Mr. Pres. Not small change, either.

They all might be right-wingers, but you were in the right when you promised to push the single payer plan.

Hold your single payer line, Mr. Pres. If not you, who?

I just paid more than $160 for a month’s supply of Nexium because United Health Care does not have that med on its list of drugs that it will cover. (That’s $160 even with a coupon that got me a 20% discount.) I’ve tried three other substitute drugs that are on the list, but none of them work on my GERD problem.

Now, it’s not as though I have a fatal illness or some precondition that my health care insurance refuses to provide medication or other coverage for. But I do pay premiums for which I, obviously, am not getting the benefits I used to get.

And it ain’t going to get any better because the system, as it is, sucks.

Stop letting the ignorant/greedy/selfish (take your pick or add more descriptors) right-wingers nickel and dime us all to death, Mr.Pres.

We voted for change.

CHANGE OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM TO SINGLE PAYER!

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW???

onward to single payer

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That’s the Single Payer health plan supported by everyone who understands how the system can work.

Anyone who wants to can easily find out the truths about the health care issue by doing a reality check.

I just don’t understand why people think that corporate-run health care will look out for their interests. Corporations, by their very nature, are in it to make a profit. So, logically corporate run health care needs to maximize premiums and minimize payments so that they can make a profit. Health care corporations

A thoughtful article in The New Republic calls the right-wings manipulations of the health care reform issues similar to the Swift Boat machinations that torpedoed John Kerry’s bid for the presidency in 2004.

Snippets from that article:

Exhibit number one is the treatment of Eziekel Emanuel, the distinguished oncologist and bioethicist who is working on health reform at the Office of Management and Budget. In the course of his writings, which span academia and popular publications, he has argued forcefully and clearly against physician-assisted suicide. Yet somehow Emanuel finds himself accused of–wait for it–advocating physician assisted suicide.

Every year, millions of families struggle to get affordable medical care for themselves or their loved ones–and end up in financial ruin, going without medical care, or some combination of the two. Many of these cases involve diseases like cerebral palsy or Parkinson’s–or other conditions that require ongoing, expensive care.

Insurance companies try their best to avoid taking on these people. Apply for an individual policy with one of these pre-existing conditions and an insurer will reject you if it can. If it can’t–if, say, you’re lucky enough to get coverage through an employer–you may well find the insurance doesn’t cover what you need.

It’d be one thing if the lunatics on the right had a coherent argument for why these initiatives might be ineffective or counterproductive. But they don’t even bother to acknowledge them, preferring instead to throw out scare quotes like this one from Palin: “Who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course.”

Of course, not all conservatives stoop to this level. You can have a rational, if still contentious, debate over health reform with the likes of Stuart Butler (who studies health policy at the Heritage Foundation) or Gail Wilensky (who ran Medicare for George H.W. Bush). But Butler, Wilensky, and others like them aren’t driving the conversation right now. Palin, Bachmann, and their allies are.

We’re stuck in what Josh Marshall has called a “nonsense feedback loop”–a conversation in which Zeke Emanuel wants to kill grandma, health care reform is bad for the people who can’t get health care, and Stephen Hawking has been snuffed out by the British National Health System. Instead of arguments that are unrelated to reality, we’re getting arguments that are the very opposite of reality.

Vehement right-wing opposition to government reform (fueled by those who have nothing to gain from such reform because they gain a great deal from the status quo) is not new. A piece in the Washington Post, In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition shines a spotlight on this pattern of right-wing disinformation dissemination. It’s the old “don’t confuse me with the truth; I know what I believe” syndrome.

The instigation is always the familiar litany: expansion of the commonweal to empower new communities, accommodation to internationalism, the heightened influence of cosmopolitans and the persecution complex of conservatives who can’t stand losing an argument. My personal favorite? The federal government expanded mental health services in the Kennedy era, and one bill provided for a new facility in Alaska. One of the most widely listened-to right-wing radio programs in the country, hosted by a former FBI agent, had millions of Americans believing it was being built to intern political dissidents, just like in the Soviet Union.

So, crazier then, or crazier now? Actually, the similarities across decades are uncanny. When Adlai Stevenson spoke at a 1963 United Nations Day observance in Dallas, the Indignation forces thronged the hall, sweating and furious, shrieking down the speaker for the television cameras. Then, when Stevenson was walked to his limousine, a grimacing and wild-eyed lady thwacked him with a picket sign. Stevenson was baffled. “What’s the matter, madam?” he asked. “What can I do for you?” The woman responded with self-righteous fury: “Well, if you don’t know I can’t help you.”

A comment left on the It’s Your Times website by “Wise Merlin” pretty much covers all the problems with the current health care system in America in language that even the least literate right-wingers can understand.

Meanwhile, closet right-wingers are popping up in the least expected places. According to Alternet.org, John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods has launched a major campaign to defeat a single payer national health insurance system.

Whole Foods, “Primo hangout of liberal Democratic yuppies,” should be boycotted, the article goes on to say.

Mackey leads his Wall Street Journal diatribe against national health insurance with a quote from one of his heroines – Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

And the problem with Mackey’s campaign is that it results in the deaths of 60 Americans every day due to lack of health insurance.

Mackey is responsible for these deaths as much as anyone.

And we are responsible for putting money into his Whole Food bank account so that he can continue his campaign without resistance.

I know that this boycott of Whole Foods will upset many liberal Democrats.

Where will they buy their organic wines?

And cheeses?

And tofu?

There are options.

Your local health food co-op.

Farmers’ markets.

Community supported agriculture.

Other corporate chains like Trader Joe’s.

So, please, join the Single Payer Action Boycott of Whole Foods.

Don’t cross the picket lines.

Don’t spend another penny at Whole Foods until John Mackey and his right wing friends are defeated.

And single payer is enacted.

Onward to single payer.

Just as in the times of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President Obama is faced with two connected but separate American crises: the recession/depression of this greedy capitalist economy and the struggle of ordinary citizens to survive on various fronts (health, jobs, education etc.)

According this article:

FDR was not able to solve the economic/capitalist problems of the Great Depression. World War II did that. [Obama is faced with finding a less drastic solution.]

But FDR did make life better for America’s not-wealthy citizens, focusing his New Deal on relief for individuals who through no fault of their own were unable to provide for themselves; recovery of the economy so that business would be able to start hiring people again; and reform of the government and the economy to avoid the recurrence of problems that had risen persistently during the industrial age.

His list of enacted legislation included the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act, which enabled the formation of labor unions.

Highly paid corporate executives, who can afford to sock away millions that slip through tax loopholes and who see labor unions as depriving their businesses of additional profit, don’t believe that FDR’s New Deal was that much of a big deal. And so neither do they support Obama’s administration’s efforts to fix the same kinds of problems that FDR faced. After all, those are the problems of the “common man” and have nothing to do with them.

It is time for us common people to rise up and take our country back from the greedy and self-centered who really have no stake in improving the quality of our lives and our health care.

ONWARD TO SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE.

PS. For those who need a visual aid for health care reform, here’s a great one.

hey you anti-universal health care people!

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Wake up! You’re being manipulated by those who can afford to pay for their own most expensive health care.

From here, where’s there are more links to truthful information.

Top Five Health Care Reform Lies—and How to Fight Back

Lie #1: President Obama wants to euthanize your grandma!!!

The truth: These accusations—of “death panels” and forced euthanasia—are, of course, flatly untrue. As an article from the Associated Press puts it: “No ‘death panel’ in health care bill.”1 What’s the real deal? Reform legislation includes a provision, supported by the AARP, to offer senior citizens access to a professional medical counselor who will provide them with information on preparing a living will and other issues facing older Americans.2

If you’d like to read the actual section of the legislation that spawned these outrageous claims (Section 1233 of H.R. 3200) for yourself, here it is. It’s pretty boring stuff, which is why the accusations that it creates “death panels” is so absurd. But don’t take our word for it, read it yourself.

Lie #2: Democrats are going to outlaw private insurance and force you into a government plan!!!

The truth: With reform, choices will increase, not decrease. Obama’s reform plans will create a health insurance exchange, a one-stop shopping marketplace for affordable, high-quality insurance options.3 Included in the exchange is the public health insurance option—a nationwide plan with a broad network of providers—that will operate alongside private insurance companies, injecting competition into the market to drive quality up and costs down.4 If you’re happy with your coverage and doctors, you can keep them.5 But the new public plan will expand choices to millions of businesses or individuals who choose to opt into it, including many who simply can’t afford health care now.

Lie #3: President Obama wants to implement Soviet-style rationing!!!

The truth: Health care reform will expand access to high-quality health insurance, and give individuals, families, and businesses more choices for coverage. Right now, big corporations decide whether to give you coverage, what doctors you get to see, and whether a particular procedure or medicine is covered—that is rationed care. And a big part of reform is to stop that.

Health care reform will do away with some of the most nefarious aspects of this rationing: discrimination for pre-existing conditions, insurers that cancel coverage when you get sick, gender discrimination, and lifetime and yearly limits on coverage.6 And outside of that, as noted above, reform will increase insurance options, not force anyone into a rationed situation.

Lie #4: Obama is secretly plotting to cut senior citizens’ Medicare benefits!!!

The truth: Health care reform plans will not reduce Medicare benefits.7 Reform includes savings from Medicare that are unrelated to patient care In fact, the savings comes from cutting billions of dollars in overpayments to insurance companies and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.8

Lie #5: Obama’s health care plan will bankrupt America!!!

The truth: We need health care reform now in order to prevent bankruptcy—to control spiraling costs that affect individuals, families, small businesses, and the American economy. Right now, we spend more than $2 trillion dollars a year on health care.9 The average family premium is projected to rise to over $22,000 in the next decade10—and each year, nearly a million people face bankruptcy because of medical expenses.11 Reform, with an affordable, high-quality public option that can spur competition, is necessary to bring down skyrocketing costs. Also, President Obama’s reform plans would be fully paid for over 10 years and not add a penny to the deficit.

I’m looking at the photos that b!X took and posted on Flickr of the emotionally charged gathering in Portland OR regarding the health care issue. We are, indeed, a country manipulated into being divided. What a shame.