There I go again! Getting all optimistic! I lost my head for a minute…indulge me…

And all the vitriolic volume cranked up by the “true Americans”…you know who I mean, the ‘c’hristian Republicans (‘c’Rs), screaming in the faces of progressives and democratic congressmembers in outraged indignation – that THEY have read the hundreds and hundreds of pages of “the health care bill” (the one that doesn’t even technically exist at this point) so the rest of us had better read it or screw off. And we all know how well-read and studied these folks are…

Then two days ago…one of their own informed members of the ‘c’Rs, and current resident of C Street House, Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, had this to say in an article on the Huffington Post about developing an informed opinion on health care out of concern for the American public:

Republicans challenged Democrats to read the whole bill this summer — even though Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell later admitted that he hadn’t.

In July, Inhofe said that stalling or blocking health care reform would be a “huge gain” for Republicans in the 2010 election.

At a town hall meeting Wednesday Sen. Jim Inhofe told Chickasha residents he does not need to read the 1,000 page health care reform bill, he will simply vote against it.

“I don’t have to read it, or know what’s in it. I’m going to oppose it anyways,” he said.

Okay!  Add Inhofe to the growing list…and I think they need to take this to the floor of congress and have a “movie-day” with popcorn and pillows. In fact, they could up the ante and offer treats to those who can properly use the following words in proper context in a sentence – fascism; socialism; communism; democracy; republic.

I can guarantee you that the investment in treat handouts would be minimal.

QUICK UPDATE:

A comment from a reader suggests that we all go over to You Tube and vote this UP. In doing so, it is abundantly clear to me that I am just a hopeless optimist! Reading some of the comments under the YouTube video of this over on the YT page…and you will be shaking your head too! What a bunch of…! They’re embarrassing…

UPDATE!!  BAILIN’ PALIN BAILS AGAIN! THIS WOMAN IS UNBELIEVABLE…

Link here to Lisa Derrick’s article that was JUST posted to LaFiga Firedoglake.com.

She can’t even commit to something she is committed to!

Below is the article I put together last night before the news that she now claims to have never been invited to this shin-dig.  There ya go Sarah! Step on your own!  Let us know how that will keep working for you…what a piece of work…

She has picked another spotlight to hover under. Parental consent. It is essentially – “Fox joins Change Point and promoted by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council”.  When I say Fox, it is the combination of her appeal to have all her “friends” tune in and act out by being loyal and faithful watchers of Glenn Beck, and her own questionable mental state that urges her to support this very unstable man.

Her appearance at this ‘event’ will get coverage. Adding to the media attraction is that another very active dominionist extremist, Star Parker, will be there sharing the spotlight with her.  Parker is also scheduled to speak at the Family Research Council’s “Value Voters Council Summit in Washington, D.C. next month on September 18-20, 2009, and of course Palin simply can’t decide – although she is on the list as a “maybe”.

Oh boy…here they go!  Winding up to convey their message of take back America by mandating “Family Values” based on biblical origins and shoving them down our throats…

…while simultaneously absolving themselves from any wrongdoings in C Street fashion because they are the “chosen elite” and are therefore forgiven of past and future sins because they are “doing the Lord’s work”.

So getting back to tonight’s show, I guess this opportunity for Palin and Parker to test the mics at Governor Parnell’s church, is a great way to launch their sanctimonious partnership in the name of “pro-life” by pushing for a law that would require all minor females to notify their parents before seeking an abortion in the event a minor girl went in search of one – even when the pregnancy may be a result of rape/incest and put the girl in harm’s way by seeking permission.

P & P are using this for two main political messages: 1)  declare abortion illegal under any circumstance; and 2)  keep the fires stoked that Obama is a proponent of federal tax dollars going to pay for abortion in his health care reform bill…well, and in Parker’s world add that she claims abortion is a direct tool of genocide against African-Americans among other interesting claims.

And of course, the personal pandering and clambering for constant media attention always a primary factor.  While Parker is a regular mouthpiece on Fox news, and Palin is rallying her ‘friends’ in the Internet world to support Glenn Beck, they continue to command audiences whether through the media or congregations and rile up the paranoid extremists.

For those of you who have the interest, I am going to give you a tremendous amount of information below that you will learn so much from with regard to how these seemingly regional appearances link to the bigger picture of national Political Dominionism.  What I am inserting here is the raw research material provided by “dogemporer” on how this righteous duo fit into the puzzle.  You will also notice that the connections are like a spider web and each link reveals another and another and another.  But this is a glimpse of how we are able to bind them all together.   FotF=Focus on the Family; AFC=Alaska Family Council; NARasite=New Apostolic Reformation parasite;

It turns out Palin is connected with Alaskans for Parental Rights
(http://www.alaskansforparentalrights.org/) which is a front of a front
of a front of a front.  (Yes, it’s pretty much a classic “matroshka doll
front”; Alaskans for Parental Rights is a front of Alaska Family Action,
which in turn is a 501(c)4 lobbying front of Alaska Family Council
(http://www.alaskafamilycouncil.org/), which (along with (de facto if
not de jure) Family Research Council) is a Focus on the Family front
(http://www.alaskafamilycouncil.org/about_us/focus_family_assn.html
gives more details–pretty much it’s a FotF state affiliate (and
specifically a front of Citizenlink, itself a front of FotF Action,
itself the 501(c)4 lobbying wing of FotF that it set up after it
“officially” split off Family Research Council under threat of FotF
losing its tax-exempt status)–and http://www.citizenlink.org/fpc/ gives
more info on the networks nationwide).

This is actually pretty interesting, as AFC has apparently had some
disagreements with Palin regarding Supreme Court appointees
(http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/groups/alaska-family-council).
This proves, even more, that Sarah Palin is going into “stealth and
organise” mode–Alaskans for Parental Rights is a frontgroup set up for
the sole purpose of forcing a referendum on passing a strict “parental
notification” law regarding abortions for minors similar to that in
Missouri (http://www.alaskansforparentalrights.org/about)–Missouri’s
law, of note, has only limited judicial bypass options, and it is
legally a felony for even a relative to take a minor across state lines
for purposes of obtaining an abortion in a state with friendlier
judicial bypass options.

Interestingly, another FotF frontgroup–the Alliance Defense Fund, a
group that promotes itself as being a parallel-economy “Christian
Alternative” to legit civil rights legal groups like the ACLU or
Americans United–has been doing quite a bit of damage control and
pimping of Palin
(http://www.alaskansforparentalrights.org/aggregator/sources/4 gives a
large list, almost all links pointing to Alliance Defense Fund news briefs).

Star Parker…oh gods, Star Parker is just all kinds of friggin’
*speshul*.  Parker is an example of, shall we say, a “house slave” of the dominionist movement,
and in particular likes to promote the idea that abortion was meant as a
method of “back-door genocide of African-Americans”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Parker and yes, sadly, this exact
sort of whargarbl is heavily used now as a recruitment tool by NARasite
groups in particular to recruit African-Americans).  In fact, much of
her schtick is in fact essentially the old neopentecostal “I was a
horrid horrid sinner and druggie and I had lots of abortions and then I
found God” narrative (pretty much what one can consider the “involved in
atrocities then converted” dialogue–which has literally been used for
supposed “Satanists” in the 80s during the “Satanic Panic”, is used a
lot nowadays with “former terrorists”, and has even been promoted up to
literal Godwin’s Law-invoking claims of being former Hitler Youth who
converted; yes, it is literally an honest-to-God “conversion
trope”)–her “Saved Ex-Slut” trope-story is at
http://www.christianitytoday.com/tcw/1997/julaug/7w4022.html?start=2 for
your perusal.

Parker is especially appealing to neopentes and neocons, in part,
because she claims to essentially be an ex-welfare-queen and ex-Dr.
Feelgood (which plays to a *very* nasty popular myth regarding “black
welfare queens”) and promotes “abstinence only” stuff; she operates a
group called Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education
(http://www.urbancure.org/) that in essence promotes NARasite theories
about why African-Americans are being held down (tl;dr version: they
ain’t got enough God–no matter that African-Americans are in general
some of the most solidly Evangelical Christians in the US–NARasite
neopentecostalism is relatively new in the African-American church
community, however).  Among other things, she essentially claims that
LBJ’s War on Poverty destroyed African-American culture
(http://www.talk2action.org/story/2009/3/9/93733/84075), even writing a
book called “Uncle Sam’s Plantation” promoting this.

Parker is rather well documented as having connections with FotF Action
(http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/9/4/05840/96219) and apparently
has stumped for Palin in past; she’s pretty much one of the “rising
stars” of the political dominionist community
(www.talk2action.org

and in particular http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/10/19/20916/994
and http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/9/13/17438/3915 or the promo
material on her own site at http://www.urbancure.org/starparker.asp).

In particular, Parker does seem to have NARasite linkage; she shared the
stage with David Barton of the NARasite historical-revisionist group
“Wallbuilders” (http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/7/18/142622/634)
along with Rick Scarborough at a “Penetrating America’s Heart
Conference” held Sept. 25-27, 2000 at Encourager Church; Encourager is a
“stealth Assemblies” NARasite church with linkages to C. Peter Wagner’s
network in particular that literally operates nowadays as a de facto
“daughter” church of the infamous NARasite Brownsville A/G in Pensacola
(http://www.encouragerchurch.org/ and in particular
http://www.encouragerchurch.org/staff1.html notes how it’s essentially a
Third Wave/Joel’s Army church DIRECTLY descended from Brownsville).
More NARasite linkage (and “Assemblies NARasite” in particular) comes
from some of her advisory board members–Kenneth Blackwell (connected
with World Harvest Church in Columbus, a NARasite “Assemblies
daughter”), John Ashcroft (yes, as in the Assemblies NARasite who was
“annointed” as Attorney-General, as in the literal son of the founder of
the Assemblies frontgroup Chi Alpha), and the head of the dominionist
“Liberty Counsel” legal-harassment group
(http://www.urbancure.org/advisors.asp).

Parker serves not only as an “Uncle Tom” (or “Auntie Thomasina”) to the
African-American community but also to women; she’s linked with the
Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, a “conservative women” think-tank
(http://www.cblpi.org/index.cfm); she’s a favourite on the whargarbl
sites Townhall (http://townhall.com/columnists/StarParker/archive.shtml)
and WorldNetDaily (http://www.wnd.com/news/archives.asp?AUTHOR_ID=219).

Her present husband (she is apparently trotted out especially as an
example of “ebony and ivory living in perfect harmony”; her husband is
white) was in seminary at a steeplejacked “Charismatic Episcopalian”
church as of 1997 (http://www.theeffectivetruth.info/testlsip.html notes
her husband is pastor of St. Michael’s Charismatic Episcopal Church.

So, long story short–this is pretty much *precisely* the crowd Palin
would be hanging around with.

Again, I know this is a lot of information, but when you see the linkages and how deep they go, you can see why we are concerned about these seemingly inocuous appearances.  These are planned and intentional to acheive specific outcomes, and IF we hear about them, it is easy to dismiss them as an “so what, she is speaking at a church – big surprise” kind of reaction.  Believe it or not I only provided a third of that email for you, but it gives you a significant amount of reference material to check out as time allows you.

Palin and Parker are both being used by the boys at the top, but their egos allow them to lap up the glory along the way.  And who are the boys at the top who are referenced in this outline by dogemporer?  James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Dave Barton, and C. Peter Wagner – just to name a few – who are all entertwined with each other and groups like Youth with a Mission =YAM who =Loren Cunningham who = The Fellowship who = The Family recently exposed by Jeff Sharlet.

Soooo…anyone in Anchorage going tonight?

UPDATE!!  BAILIN’ PALIN BAILS AGAIN! THIS WOMAN IS UNBELIEVABLE…

Link here to Lisa Derrick’s article that was JUST posted to LaFiga Firedoglake.com.

She can’t even commit to something she is committed to!

Tom Delay, who is under idictment for money laundering as I posted in my ongoing list of GOP crimials, is making time out of his busy schedule of “stopping Obama” to be on “Dancing with the Stars”.  (This just further confirms for me that this TV show is VERY loose with the use of the word “stars”!)

Let’s review this “star“…shall we?

Tom DeLay, former House Majority Leader was indicted for campaign finance fraud, criminal conspiracy, and two counts of money laundering.  He was arrested and booked at Harris County Jail on October 20, 2005.  Since then, he’s been out on bail pending trial.  Also known as “Hot Tub Tom” from his days in the Texas State Legislature, DeLay became a born-again Christian in 1985.  After his wife Christine DeLay began volunteering as a court-appointed special advocate for children in foster care, the DeLays also became foster parents. DeLay has declined to comment on reports in The New Yorker that he is estranged from much of his family, including his mother and one of his brothers.

DeLay was not personally friends with Armey or Gingrich; he considered them intellectual posers who were not committed to Christian values.

And since he has such upstanding morals…you can see his conflict (rolling of eyes)…

DeLay’s involvement with the lobbying industry also includes a pointed effort on the part of the Republican Party to parlay the Congressional majority into a dominance of K Street, the famed lobbying district of Washington, D.C. (known as the K Street Project) DeLay, Senator Rick Santorum, and conservative activist Grover Norquist launched a campaign in 1995 encouraging lobbying firms to retain Republican officials in top positions.

DeLay has received gifts from Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, including paid golfing holidays to Scotland, concert tickets, and the use of Abramoff’s private skyboxes for fundraisers. Abramoff has since pleaded guilty to federal charges in an influence-peddling investigation.  The Associated Press reported on April 7, 2005.

Today Tom runs around from one Fox show to another giving his ‘professional’ take on the Obama Administration and actually has the gaul to infer that the “Right” is the answer to our problems in this country!  After all, they have done such an exemplary job over the past 8 years!!  If they have all the answers – then WHY AREN”T THEY SHARING THEM???

This is only 33 seconds long, but that is still more time than I can stand listening to this guy.

When asked how he has time to be a “dance star”, DeLay replied, “That’s just five hours a day that I dance,” he told The Daily Beast Tuesday morning from Houston, Texas, as he drove to his first training session. “I’ve got another 19 hours to stop Obama.”

What a great values driven American!  What a guy!  What a conservative republican patriot!  What a ‘c’hristian!

And when asked to expound on his thoughts regarding Palin?

Steve Waldman wrote on beliefnet.com –

“In a brief interview I had today, the former House Majority Leader said he was deeply unenthusiastic about McCain but now shares the prevailing ecstasy about Sarah Palin.

It’s obvious that’s a woman with a world view. I could see it in the way she looked at her family. I could see in the discussion around her child. It’s obvious her faith is her foundation. A Christian has a world view that allows you see a situation…they’ve made the bad choice. So do you see it as a punishment as Obama does or as a blessing as Christians see it?”

They flock together…don’t they?

You have just GOT to watch this for yourself…

…he has truly met the I.Q. standard for the Palin version of conservative republican.

I was just having a conversation on the air yesterday during a radio show about how these same congress members who are so outraged and such alarmists about Obama’s health care reform intruding into our personal lives, especially where end of life decisions are concerned, and then we noted what HYPOCRITES these sanctimonious republicans truly are!

Darren Hutchinson of Dissenting Justice is guest-blogging today for Glenn Greenwald’s column over at Salon.com sums it up beautifully in his article referring to Palin and Grassley as “Dumb & Dumber”…but there is a lot of competition for that title!  Here are a few excerpts for you, but I do recomend that you click this link to read his entire article…well worth it!

“Sarah Palin and Senator Chuck Grassley are working together to spread lies regarding the substance of pending healthcare reform legislation.

In 2005, Grassley supported legislation that injected Congress into the Terri Schiavo saga. Schiavo’s husband – and medical proxy under Florida law — waged an almost 10-year legal battle to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment on behalf of his wife, who was in a persistent vegetative state. After a federal judge ordered the removal of food and hydration, Congress intervened and passed a law that was blatantly crafted to nullify the Florida litigation and to keep Schiavo alive against the wishes of her husband, who acted on her behalf.

Although the Senate passed the statute by unanimous consent, Grassley revealed his position and expressed his support for the measure, stating that: “I support the effort to protect Terri Schiavo. It’s the first case of its kind, a chance to choose life over death. I gave the option to life. . . .” Grassley, however, did not vote for life over death. Instead, he voted to authorize direct federal involvement in an end-of-life medical decision – something he currently claims to abhor.

And to finish icing this cake, Palin and Grassley both support the death penalty. Capital punishment indisputably involves the government determining whether someone will live or die.

“Dumb” works

Apparently, “dumb” works. According to the latest Gallup poll, the conservative backlash to healthcare reform has eroded support among voters – particularly independents. If members of the corporate media (as Glenn Greenwald affectionately describes the “news” outlets) did their job and uncovered the deception and hypocrisy associated with this backlash, then this movement’s rhetoric would actually face greater scrutiny and would perhaps lose some of its effectiveness. The White House also fell asleep at the wheel, as this movement continued to mobilize and to work the media. Furthermore, I suspect that many of Obama’s Web-warriors are enjoying the final weeks of summer break and have not sufficiently organized on this issue.

Public opinion, however, is extremely malleable. If progressives redouble their efforts, a pretty solid reform package might actually get through Congress without damaging (and even possibly helping) the Democrats. Stay tuned.

You know…we hear constantly from these extremists as they smugly declare that the “liberals and democrat party is afraid of Palin”.  Uh, yeah…I am afraid of ALL of them and the collective ignorance that they have brought to the Republican Party!  I am not going to say that this mentality and lack of intelligence doesn’t scare the HELL out of me!  I am concerned for anyone who doesn’t feel that way.

The hypocrisy knows no end…and these Political Dominionists consider themselves the party of Jesus Christ…WOW!

Okay, Sarah Palin does have a new position…Facebook ventriloquist.  No stretch of the imagination can convince me that Palin herself is producing these “Notes”.  They are articulate, non-folksy and referenced…which indicates a level of effort and some reading involved.  This doesn’t mean they are accurate – that’s an entirely different story which I felt is worthy of writing about.

As I read the rolling blogs on Palin’s facebook I asked myself…where is she getting her opinions?  The source of her shot across Obama’s health care proposals can be traced back to a July 24th article written by Betsy McCaughey, a former Lt. Governor of New York, published in the New York Post named “Deadly Doctors”.  Now we are getting somewhere…

As we know, there is NO BILL right now.  There are versions of a health care bill in different committees in congress making their way painfully through the process.  Yet Palin perpetuates the discussion as though this is written and complete in the form of HR 3200.  Her audience buys this and does not question that, or any of the false assertions that someone is writing for her on her facebook.  I have no doubt that these are her sentiments, and that she is enjoying the raucous caused by her dissemination of fear and paranoia – but these are not her words.  As we all know – there would be a ton of ‘there alsos’ and the ‘g’s’ are conspicuously present.

Q: Does Ezekiel Emanuel advocate sacrificing medical care for senior citizens and disabled youths for the good of society?

A: No. Critics of health care legislation are distorting the meaning of Emanuel’s academic writings on medical ethics. And Emanuel tells us, “I am not advocating this.”

FULL QUESTION

Is it true that Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel’s older brother and health adviser to President Obama, has advocated “the elderly with dementia and the young who have neurological disorders should be sacrificed for the common good”?

FULL ANSWER

The introduction of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, head of the Department of Bioethics at The Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health, into the health care reform debate came with an opinion piece written by Betsy McCaughey and published in the New York Post on July 24. Dr. Emanuel is also a health care policy adviser for the Office of Management and Budget and brother of President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

McCaughey, a former New York lieutenant governor, claimed that Ezekiel Emanuel advocated that “medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those ‘who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens.’ ” She interprets his words to mean: “Don’t give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson’s or a child with cerebral palsy.”

Dr. Emanuel strenuously objects to this interpretation. “This is certainly untrue and a distortion of my record,” he told FactCheck.org in a telephone interview. He said that his academic work is being taken completely out of context.

We agree that Emanuel’s meaning is being twisted. In one article, he was talking about a philosophical trend, and in another, he was writing about how to make the most ethical choices when forced to choose which patients get organ transplants or vaccines when supplies are limited.

What Emanuel Really Said

McCaughey cites an article Emanuel wrote nearly 15 years ago in the Hastings Center Report, a journal devoted to discussion of ethical issues in medicine. There Emanuel discusses possible philosophical justifications to “distinguish basic from discretionary health care services.” Emanuel argued that thinkers on both the left and right were beginning to converge on a single answer when it comes to allocating medical resources. Here’s the quote in full context:

Emanuel, Hastings Center Report, 1996: Communitarians endorse civic republicanism and a growing number of liberals endorse some version of deliberative democracy. … This civic republican or deliberative democratic conception of the good provides both procedural and substantive insights for developing a just allocation of health care resources. … Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity – those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations – are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia. A less obvious example is guaranteeing neuropsychological services to ensure children with learning disabilities can read and learn to reason.

Emanuel conceded that the article is “pretty abstract” and may be difficult to follow for those who are not academics, but he said that one should not then “take two sentences out of context.”

“This is clearly not written in my own voice,” he said. “I am not advocating this.”

We’ll leave it to you to determine the merits of Emanuel’s philosophical observations. But the context makes it clear that Emanuel is describing the implications of a particular philosophical trend, not offering a policy prescription.

We’ll also note that Emanuel’s article actually said that children with learning disabilities shouldget medical help to ensure that they “can read and learn to reason.” We’re not sure how McCaughey interpreted this to mean that services should be withheld from “a child with cerebral palsy.”

McCaughey also pushes the idea that Emanuel would want to ration care for seniors by quoting from a January 2009 article that Emanuel coauthored in The Lancet journal. Here, McCaughey says, he “explicitly defends discrimination against older patients.”

What Emanuel and his two coauthors were actually writing about was how to decide which patients are to receive organ transplants, vaccines or other “very scarce medical interventions” when there are not enough to go around. The three authors advocated favoring younger patients over older patients as part of a “complete lives” decision-making system aimed at saving the most years of life using the available resources. Age would be only one factor, however. Also weighing in the “complete lives” system would be such factors as a patient’s likelihood of full recovery (prognosis) and the use of a lottery when deciding between two “roughly equal” patients.

The authors disputed the idea that this system discriminates against older people in the way that favoring one race or one sex over another would discriminate. “Treating 65-year-olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not.” The authors stated that the complete lives system “empowers us to decide fairly whom to save when genuine scarcity makes saving everyone impossible.”

Emanuel told us that allocating health care services when there is an “absolute scarcity” is “one of the hardest decisions that a physician has to make.” He said that he and his fellow authors were pondering “the most ethically coherent way to do that.”

There She Goes Again

McCaughey also claims in her article that “presidential appointees” will be deciding “your care” and that Dr. Emanuel should “never be trusted with that power.” She’s echoing an earlier false claim about health care rationing that she first trotted out back in February. It’s no more true this time around. A version of the health care bill in Congress, H.R. 3200, does mention creating a comparative effectiveness research center (and a comparative effectiveness commission to oversee the center) to conduct research into how sickness “can most effectively and appropriately be prevented, diagnosed, treated, and managed clinically.” A summary of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee bill also mentions the establishment of a center for similar purposes. But the research wouldn’t be used to dictate health care coverage. The House version of the bill specifically states that the information can’t be used to mandate any policies for either private insurance coverage or for government health insurance:

H.R. 3200: Nothing in this section shall be construed to permit the Commission or the Center to mandate coverage, reimbursement, or other policies for any public or private payer.

So whether or not one might choose to trust Dr. Emanuel with the power to decide “your care,” the fact is that no such power is being proposed in the legislation now being considered.

Twisting information comes naturally to these people.  They do it to the Bible; they do it to the U.S. Constitution, and they do it to anything related to President Obama – and they do it with misinformation, hate, and a profound desire to achieve the downfall of any democratic led proposal.

Q: Does Ezekiel Emanuel advocate sacrificing medical care for senior citizens and disabled youths for the good of society?

A: No. Critics of health care legislation are distorting the meaning of Emanuel’s academic writings on medical ethics. And Emanuel tells us, “I am not advocating this.”

Full Question

Is it true that Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel’s older brother and health adviser to President Obama, has advocated “the elderly with dementia and the young who have neurological disorders should be sacrificed for the common good?”

Full Answer

The introduction of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, head of the Department of Bioethics at the clinical center of the national institutes of Health, into the health care reform debate, came with an opinion piece written by Betsy McCaughey and published in the New York Post on July 24.  Dr. Emanuel is also a health care policy advisor for the Office of Management and Budget and brother of President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

(Leah’s Note: This video takes 7 minutes to watch but well worth the time to get a clear idea just who this woman is, where she is coming from, and what her interests truly are in the Big Pharmaceutical stakes).

McCaughey, a former New York Lieutenant governor, claimed that Ezekiel Emanuel advocated that “medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those ‘who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens.’ “She interprets his words to mean:  ”Don’t give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson’s or a child with cerebral palsy.”

Dr. Emanuel strenuously objects to this interpretation.  ”This is certainly untrue and a distortion of my record, ” he told FactCheck.org in a telephone interview.  He said that his academic work is being taken completely out of context.

We agree that Emanuel’s meaning is being twisted.  In one article, he was talking about a philosophical trend, and in another, he was writing about how to make the most ethical choices when forced to choose which patients get organ transplants or vaccines when supplies are limited.

What Emanuel Really Said

McCaughey cites an article Emanuel wrote nearly 15 years ago in the Hastings Center Report, a journal devoted to discussion of ethical issues in medicine.  There Emanuel discusses possible  philosophical justifications to “distinguish basic from discretionary health care services.”  Emanuel argued that thinkers on both the left and right were beginning to converge on a single answer when it comes to allocating medical resources.  Here’s the quote in full context:

Emanuel, Hastings Center Report, 1996:  Communitarians endorse civic republicanism and a growing number of liberals endorse some version of deliberative democracy…this civic republican or deliberative democratic conception of the good provides both procedural and substantive insights for developing a just allocation of health care resources…

Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the policy-those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations-are to be socially guaranteed as basic.

Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed.  An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.  A less obvious example of guaranteeing neuropsychological services to ensure children with learning disabilities can read and learn to reason.

Emanuel conceded that the article is “pretty abstract” and may be difficult to follow for those who are not academics, but he said that one should not then “take two sentences out of context.”

“This is clearly not written in my own voice,” he said.  ” I am not advocating this.”

We’ll leave it to you to determine the merits of Emanuel’s philosophical observations.  But the context makes it clear that Emanuel is describing the implications of a particular philosophical trend, not offering a policy prescription.

We’ll also note that Emanuel’s article actually said that children with learning disabilities should get medical help to ensure that they “can read and learn to reason.”  We’re not sure how McCaughey interpreted this to mean that services should be withheld from “a child with cerebral palsy.”

McCaughey also pushes the idea that Emanuel would want to ration care for seniors by quoting from a  January 2009 article that Emanuel coauthored in The Lancet journal.  Here, McCaughey says, he “explicitly defends discrimination against older patients.”

What Emanuel and his two coauthors were actually writing about was how to decide which patients are to receive organ transplants, vaccines or other “very scarce medical interventions” when there are not enough to go around.  The three authors advocated favoring younger patients over older patients as part of a “complete lives” decision-making system aimed at saving the most years of life using the available resources.  Age would be only one factor, however.  Also weighing in the “complete lives” system would be such factors as a patient’s likelihood of full recovery (prognosis) and the use of a lottery when deciding between two “roughly equal” patients.

The authors disputed the idea that this system discriminates against older people in the way that favoring one race or one sex over another would discriminate. “Treating 65-year-olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not.”  The authors stated that the complete lives system “empowers us to decided fairly whom to save when genuine scarcity makes saving everyone impossible.”

Emanuel told us that allocating health care services when there is an “absolute scarcity” is “one of the hardest decisions that a physician has to make.”  He said that he and his fellow authors were pondering “the most ethically coherent way to do that.”

There She Goes Again

McCaughey also claims in her article that “presidential appointees” will be deciding “your care” and that Dr. Emanuel should “never be trusted with that power.”  She’s echoing an earlier false claim about health care rationing that she first trotted back in February.  It’s no more true this time around.  A version of the health care bill in Congress, H.R. 3200, does mention creating a comparative effectiveness research center (and a comparative effectiveness commission to oversee the center) to conduct research into how sickness “can most effectively and appropriately be prevented, diagnosed, treated, and managed clinically.”

A summary of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee bill also mentions the establishment of a center for similar purposes.  But the research wouldn’t be used to dictate health care coverage.  The House version of the bill specifically states that the information can’t be used to mandate any policies for either private insurance coverage or for government health insurance.

H.R. 3200:  Nothing in this section shall be construed to permit the Commission or the Center to mandate coverage, reimbursement, or other policies for any public or private payer.

So whether or not one might choose to trust Dr. Emanuel with the power to decide “your care,” the fact is that no such power is being proposed in the legislation now being considered.

Twisting information comes naturally to these people.  They do it to the Bible; they do it to the U.S. Constitution; and they do it to anything related to President Obama – and they do it with misinformation, hate, and a profound desire to achieve the downfall of any democratic led proposal to see Obama fail.  Where do they think they live?  How do they not get that directly impacts them, and their loved ones?  Unbelievable!

So McCoughey found her sucker…Palin (and Bachman, lest we forget)…to go forth and spread her crap so she can continue to benefit from Big Pharma.  God, Palin is a ditz!

For Palin to continue to stoke the coals under this notion of encouraging the elderly to sign their own death certificate as part of health care reform is simply irresponsible – especially when you have people arriving at locations where the President of the United States is about to speak with weapons and signs calling for the death of him and his family.

What was that parting shot by Palin in her last speech as governor?  Hmmm…OH!  I remember!

Palin opened her Sunday speech with what she called “some straight talk,” taking on the media and, ”You represent what could and should be a respected, honest profession, and what could and should be a cornerstone of our democracy — and that’s why our troops are willing to die for you,” she said.

“So how about in honor of the American solider you quit making things up?” she added, without elaborating.

Practice what you preach Queen Esther!

After being a guest for 2 hours on a radio show in North Carolina on WZTK, and hearing a few remarks about the flying accusations as to who is to be likened to Hitler – the GOP or the Dems – I thought this was a perfect time to share research by Alex (dogemporer) on dominionist ties to white supremacist groups that go back early in our history.

To simply shout the loudest and make grossly mistaken remarks accusing Obama of Nazism is all it takes for these ‘c’hristian neocons to jump on that bandwagon.

BUT…they vehemently deny any association with Hitler idolization when there is evidence to the contrary and out of their own mouths.  Here is the first in a series of writings that I will post by Alex from the Daily Kos:

Racists and dominionists, part 1: A troubling history

by dogemperor

Mon Oct 09, 2006 at 08:15:11 AM PDT

“Today, I begin part one of what will be a two or three part series on a secret that the dominionists very much want kept under the bed, so to speak.

Not only are many of the leaders of the dominionist group hateful in and of themselves to LGBT folks and others, it turns out that quite a number of them–including some of the leaders of the dominionist movement like the heads of the Family Research Council, anti-abortion groups, and even Ken Blackwell and John Ashcroft–are linked to some of the most virulent racist and domestic-terrorist groups in the US.

And–as we’ll see in today’s post–this has a very long history, including Christian Identity’s origins in dominion theology (yes, really!) and the oldest dominionist group in the US’s ties with American Nazi groups in the 30’s.

• dogemperor’s diary :: ::

As I’ve discussed before in my articles on dominion theology on DailyKos, “serpent seed” theology actually originated within dominionist groups–and in fact is still used by the “spiritual warfare” crowd to claim that opponents of dominionism are the literal children of the devil.  The split between dominionism proper and Christian Identity occurred in 1948 when the Church of Jesus Christ Christian was founded–as a split from International Foursquare.

There are a few bits of note here–William Branham was one of the first practitioners in the AoG and other pentecostal groups of what would later be termed “dominion theology”–the word-faith aka “name it and claim it” movement originates from him, as do aspects of “latter rain” theology.  Charles Fox Parnham, also mentioned in the article, is the actual founder of pentecostal sects including the Assemblies of God and at least one other source notes Parnham’s influence in their early theology.  The AoG itself has had a long historical record of involvement with dominionism–the term “dominion theology” actually arises from theology in the word-faith movement that claims that illness occurs because “Satan presently has dominion” and that Pentecostals (being the only truly “saved” individuals) must “take dominion” of all things to secure God’s blessing over them and participate in “spiritual warfare”.

The other group of note is the group that can be truthfully stated to have been the first dominionist group in the US in action, if not in name–the Full Gospel Businessmens’ Fellowship International.  FGBMFI was started by an AoG preacher and effectively operates as a “business outreach” of the Assemblies, and can legitimately be seen as a front group of that denomination; they are also responsible for promotion of dominionism throughout the AoG (and even to other non-pentecostal groups–the FGBMFI is a major promoter of “sheep stealing” and infiltration of mainstream Christian churches) and is also the source of spread of most of the spiritually abusive practices within the Assemblies of God, including the theological basis for dominionism in that denomination:

(from a preliminary list of groups that may be front-groups of, or effectively run by, the Assemblies of God)

Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship International (a front group of the AoG targeting businessmen and other professionals; has been associated with coercive Yoido Full Gospel Church in Korea (which is the church that originated the “Third Wave” aka “Brownsville” stuff and other coercive tactics in the AoG); per multiple reports is associated with spiritual abuse as well as dominionist planning and may beparticularly responsible for dominionist infiltration of the military; per this article andthis article group has falsely advertised itself as interfaith group but rejects non-dominionists)

There is even some evidence that the FGBMFI may have been the original source promoting dominionism in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Going a bit further from the Assemblies of God in particular (the fact that the denomination is hip-deep within the dominionist movement, and may be its actual originator, is quite well documented especially on sites like Yurica Report and Deception In The Church) and looking at the whole “British Israelism” thing in general–the two main descendants of that theology are Pentecostals (who believe that they along with the Jewish people are the “chosen people” and–in “dominion theology” popular in pentecostal circles–must create a theocracy to “secure God’s blessing”) and Christian Identity (which rejects outright the idea of Jews being, well, Jewish).

If it were just a matter of dominionism being a “sister movement” to a racist ideology, or even Christian Identity being merely a racist split from pentecostalism, that’d be one thing.  The problem is, the links are rather deeper than that (as noted, dominionism was essentially founded by racists) and the links continue to the present day.”

So how does that stack up to the ludicrous and totally baseless remarks flung carelessly out there by Palin and soooo many others (such as on the Fox airwaves, for example)?  I have linked the title to Alex’ full article at Daily Kos which I highly recommend reading as the connections and people involved in their twisted world will surprise you.

On the other hand I was very heartened by the overall sentiment being one of promoting discussion and not shouting hate.  A very welcomed message…

Jeff Sharlet’s book, “The Family” has gained a tremendous amount of attention recently on the heels of adulterous affairs by South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and Nevada Senator John Ensign.  It is an important book to add to your reading list and I have added it to my MUST READ list.

From Publishers Weekly
Checking in on a friend’s brother at Ivenwald, a Washington-based fundamentalist group living communally in Arlington, Va., religion and journalism scholar Sharlet finds a sect whose members refer to Manhattan’s Ground Zero as “the ruins of secularism”; intrigued, Sharlet accepts on a whim an invitation to stay at Ivenwald. He’s shocked to find himself in the stronghold of a widespread “invisible” network, organized into cells much like Ivenwald, and populated by elite, politically ambitious fundamentalists; Sharlet is present when a leader tells a dozen men living there, “You guys are here to learn how to rule the world.”

As it turns out, the Family was established in 1935 to oppose FDR’s New Deal and the spread of trade unions; since then, it has organized well-attended weekly prayer meetings for members of Congress and annual National Prayer Breakfasts attended by every president since Eisenhower. Further, the Family’s international reach (“almost impossible to overstate”) has “forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most oppressive regimes in the world.” In the years since his first encounter, Sharlet has done extensive research, and his thorough account of the Family’s life and times is a chilling expose.

Now you have to read an article written by University of Alaska Professor Alan Boraas last fall about how Palin has ties to the same power-brokers in The Family that Jeff writes about in his book.

Palin’s connection to what Jeff Sharlet has called “elite fundamentalism” is of interest now that she is an election and a heartbeat away from the presidency. Franklin Graham has been the keynote speaker for the Alaska Governor’s Prayer Breakfast the past two years. According to their Web site, the organizers believe, “God directs the affairs of Man and is the ultimate authority over human events.”

The Alaska Governor’s Prayer Breakfast is connected to the National Prayer Breakfast sponsored by The Fellowship Foundation, also known as “The Family,” which espouses similar beliefs. The Family is headed by Doug Coe, one of the most influential evangelicals in Washington, D.C. Coe’s group tends to operate behind the scenes organizing small cells attended by the power elite, mostly Republicans. George Bush was saved in such a cell while in Texas.

Elite fundamentalists believe, according to Sharlett, not only in religious determinism but that they are personally chosen by God to be in positions of power. By claiming divine legitimacy of their political power, elite fundamentalists relegate the opposition to being the devil’s tool. They are making a frighteningly close return to the pre-enlightenment concept of rule by divine right, which our founding fathers rejected as anathema to democracy and established, instead, the separation of church and state lest decisions be made on the basis of good versus evil rather than wise versus unwise.

I have spoken with both these men and we all agree that to dismiss Palin, or any of these other potential rising GOP leaders is irresponsible given that in order to rise to the top in their party – political dominionism ideology is a given.  The more ignorant the rhetoric and the more absurd they appear – the quicker we are to dismiss them.  That is where we are in error.

First of all, I would like to thank those who bought “TheoPalinism – The Face of Failed Extremism”, and those who took interest enough to pick up my cards with the web site address.  Your interest and support is crucial in taking the steps necessary to begin educating ourselves about the Political Dominionism and how entrenched it is in our political lanscape.  It is imperative that we not roll our eyes and dismiss the lunacy of these people who now represent the neo-conservatives in America, and hennce the Republican Party.

Often times we are our own worst enemies.  Let me elaborate.  As progressives, democrats, moderates and so on – we tend to intellectualize issues to death!  When it comes to taking action steps, we balk.  We are so busy being tolerant…and politically correct…that our tolerance of the GOP intolerance – is going to put us right back in the minority!

Out of the hundreds of people that came by my table with my display of “TheoPalinism – The Face of Failed Extremism”, I only sold 21 books.  I did engage many more than that in short discussions, but the overwhelming sentiment was that they weren’t interested in hearing about Palin.  There was a great deal more interest in the 2nd book, “God’s Own Party? – Keep Your Bible OFF My Ballot!”  But there was a definite disconnect and a total repulsion at hearing about who this lunatic really is, and what her role is, has been and will be in the upcoming years – whether she ever runs for elected office again or not.

My sense of frustration is not in the lack of sales because TheoPalinism is a self-published book that I see no profit from.  I wrote it as a pre-cursor to the 2nd book and to illuminate where this wingnut sprouted from and why she is a force that we cannot just shake our heads at and ignore with a dismissive attitude.  My sincere hope for TheoPalinism is that it will introduce what a political Dominionist candidate looks like and how dangerously close we came to having one as ridiculous as Palin in the White House.

What is disheartening about the lack of interest, is that it brings to light what an uphill battle this is going to be.  I have said before that I have no interest or energy in trying to change the minds of the brainwashed sheeples in the GOP.  But, getting the attention of everyone else is no small task either.

Even Ron Reagan made a quick dismissive comment about how Palin isn’t a factor and bypassed my table without even talking to me or looking at the book.  Again, people are just not getting this.  If she never ran for office again, it is about her ‘higher calling’ and how she will be used to whip the GOP fanatics into a froth such as she is doing right now on the issue of Health Care – by throwing out despicable garbage like “Obama’s ‘death panel’, and “euthanasia’ for the elderly.

It is about holding onto our seats in local, state and congressional elections NEXT YEAR!  2010!  THAT is what I am concerned about.  2012? Sure!  But right now it is about the millions of right-wing fanatics that hang on her every word who will show up in any weather, at any time of the day or night, across America to hear this insanity that she has to regurgitate.  It doesn’t matter what we think of her, it matters that she is like a gasoline hose dousing these tea-bagging republicans with hate and misinformation that is dangerous.

Fortunately Bill Press and Mike Malloy were genuinely intrigued (and I will follow up with them this week) – and to some degree Stephanie Miller and Thom Hartmann exhibited a modicum amount of interest.  But none of them were interested enough to buy the book.

So I need your help.  We need to tell our fellow “progressives” that it is playing right into their hands to turn our backs on learning not only about Palin, but Bachman, Huckabee, Jindal, Pence, Gingrich, and the list goes on.  TheoPalinism was intended to highlight their “poster gal”…but she is by NO means the leader of the pack.  We need to take a play right out of their book and fight back.

The dumber Palin comes across, the less we take her seriously, and the more dangerous she becomes.  If you have any doubts about that…just keep watching her as the weeks and months slip by toward the 2010 elections.  Meanwhile, I am now charged even more to complete my draft manuscript of “God’s Own Party?” and get it in the capable and really pissed off hands of Frank Schaeffer so that he can walk it into his NY publisher.  For those of you not so familiar with him, and those who are but may have missed it – here is his interview with Rachel Maddow from the other night.  With Frank’s endorsement (and those of many more) the 2nd book will draw the attention we need to get this message out in the same way that Jeff Sharlet’s book “The Family” is finally going viral.

So I will work on that as well as continuing to post articles here, and welcome some upcoming speaking engagements – and hopefully we will turn our own people around so that we don’t have to fight resistance from within on top of these extreme manipulative fanatics.

This is a GREAT article by Frank Schaeffer!

Lies, Intimidation, and the Insurance Industry: The Republicans Have Lost Their Minds

By Frank Schaeffer
Posted on August 7, 2009, Printed on August 7, 2009

http://www.religiondispatches.org/blog/politics/1749/

The Republican Old Guard are in the fix an atheist would be in if Jesus showed up and raised his mother from the dead: Their world view has just been shattered. Obama’s election has literally driven them over the edge.

Consider former congressman Dick Armey. Several far right foundations and the multitrillion dollar health-insuranceindustry have teamed up with him to organize the far right foot soldiers of the Republican Party to intimidate people speaking on behalf of health-care reform. They are using my old shock troops — given that many of these folks were first energized by the Evangelical pro-life movement that my late father and I started in the 1970s. What we did to clinics they are now doing to congressmen and others speaking out for health care reform. It’s called intimidation.

Having failed at the ballot box, having watched their Fox News-organized “tea parties” fizzle, the intimidation tactics which the Republicans have embraced are being used in a well-financed, top-down orchestrated fake grass roots campaign by corporate interests to try and protect the profits of the insurance business.

Armey’s FreedomWorks is organizing against health care reform. Armey’s lobbying firm represents pharmaceutical companies including Bristol-Myers Squibb. Armey’s lobbying firm also represents the trade group for the life insurance industry. FreedomWorks is supporting the status quo at all costs. (They are also fans of fossil fuels. Armey’s lobbying firm represents Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister of the UAE, on energy related issues.)

Oh!  This is a good spot to interrupt Frank’s article and insert that blurb about him from my list of 123 GOP Criminals!

Dick Armey Republican US RepresentativeTexas, former professor at North Texas State in Denton, anit-gay bigot has been accused by The Dallas Observer of sexually harassing at least female students.  This is the same area that Constable Larry Dale Floyd hails from.  (see his listing).

Astroturfing activities

Dick Armey’s organization, FreedomWorks was behind the creation of a fake grassroots web site called Angryrenter.com which rallies opposition to “the Obama Housing Bailout.” The site urges people to oppose bailing out mortgage companies. The site claims to represent “Renters and responsible homeowners against a government mortgage bailout.”

Michael M. Phillips, a reporter with the Wall Street Journal wrote about AngryRenter.com:

AngryRenter.com looks a bit like a digital ransom note, with irregular fonts, exclamation points and big red arrows — all emphasizing prudent renters’ outrage over a proposed government bailout for irresponsible homeowners. “It seems like America’s renters may NEVER be able to afford a home,” AngryRenter.com laments. The Web site urges like-minded tenants to let Congress feel their fury by signing an online petition. “We are millions of renters standing up for our rights!” Angry they may be, but the people behind AngryRenter.com are certainly not renters. Though it purports to be a spontaneous uprising, AngryRenter.com is actually a product of an inside-the-Beltway conservative advocacy organization led by Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, and publishing magnate Steve Forbes, a fellow Republican. It’s a fake grass-roots effort — what politicos call an AstroTurf campaign — that provides a window into the sleight-of-hand ways of Washington.^[1]

Schaeffer goes on to write in his article:

Last year, the Wall Street Journal exposed FreedomWorks for building “amateur-looking” websites to promote far right interests of Armey. FreedomWorks represents a top-down, corporate-friendly approach that’s been the norm for conservative organizations for years. How do I know this is the norm? Because I used to have strategy meetings with the late Jack Kemp and Dick Army and the rest of the Republican gang about using their business ties to help finance the pro-life movement to defeat Democrats. I know this script. I helped write it.

Democratic members of Congress are being harassed by angry, sign-carrying mobs and disruptive behavior at local town halls. It’s the tactic we used to follow abortion providers around their neighborhoods. “Protesters” surrounded Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY) and forced police officers to have to escort him to his car for safety. We used to do the same to Dr. Tiller… until someone killed him.

Which sure makes me ask myself…how far will this insanity go?  Who will get hurt before this is exposed for what it really is?  This is NOT simple freedom of speech.  This is indeed organized mayhem!

How can the right stoop so low?

I used to know Dick Armey quite well. One of my sons even worked for him as an intern. I knew Armey in the context of his being a fan of my late Evangelical Religious Right leader father Francis Schaeffer. (Back in the day when I was a right wing “pro-life” organizer who has long since quit the Republicans in disgust at their — our — descent into extremism and hate.) Armey was once a decent guy, whatever his political views. How could he stoop so low as to be organizing what amounts to America’s Brownshirts today?

I think I know what happened to him, Gingrich and the rest: They can’t compute that their white man-led conservative revolution is dead. They can’t reconcile their idea of themselves with the fact that white men like them don’t run the country any more — and never will again. To them the black president is leading a column of the “other” into their promised land. Gays, immigrants, blacks, progressives, even a female Hispanic appointed to the Supreme Court: for them this is the Apocalypse.

Conclusion: the fascist formula

Here’s the emerging American version of the fascist’s formula: combine millions of dollars of lobbyists’ money with embittered troublemakers who have a small army of not terribly bright white angry people (collected over decades through pro-life mass mailing networks) at their beck and call, ever ready to believe any myth or lie circulated by the semi literate and completely and routinely misinformed right wing — Evangelical religious underground. Then put his little mob together with the insurance companies’ big bucks.

What can be done?

It’s time that this whole shabby (and insane) business be exposed, vilified in run out of town on a rail by whatever responsible Republicans — if any — that are still in the party and who want to see the fortunes of their party revived. Republican leaders taking insurance industry money via lobbying firms and using it to organize what amounts to roving bands of thugs not only need to be exposed but thrown out of the public debate forever. They should become absolute pariahs.

It’s time to give this garbage a name: insurance-industry-funded fascism.

If there is anyone out there who can write about this with certainty and authority, it would be Frank Schaeffer…and we need to heed his words.

It is kind of like the later years of the creator of nuclear weapons, that although Oppenheimer’s scientific expertise produced the bomb, he grew increasingly uneasy over its application and destructive power. Oppenheimer became the first of a long line of antinuclear activists and scientists to protest nuclear weapons and nuclear power.

So as did Oppenheimer regret creating something so destructive, now comes Frank Schaeffer with his own regrets for co-creating a social weapon of sorts – and his words of warning.

Here is another “re-post”.  I am not being lazy..lol..these are just worth sharing in their entirety!  Some things do not need to be restated…although the graphics and bold italics are mine for emphasis…

August 6, 2009

Republican Autoerotic Asphyxiation

By Allan Goldstein

One glance at the birthers and the town hall screamers tells you all you need to know.  You don’t even need to see it, you can hear it in their strangled cries.  The Republican party is a junkie, addicted to hate.

“The base is on fire!” the Republican spokeszombies shout, spittle flaking their bloodless lips.  ‘We’re back!” they spew, “bigger and better than ever!”

Hate is a rush, hate is a drug.  When all your plans and dreams have gone to hell, when everything you stand for has been repudiated, when the people have abandoned you and it feels like God himself has forsaken you, hate will give you a reason to live.

The problem with hate is that, like any drug, you develop a tolerance to it.  Last year a Republican mob could get into ecstasies of joy by chanting the lie “Obama is a Muslim!”  That worked for a while, but then they had to up the dose.  “Obama is a socialist!” was good for a nice hate buzz, but it got old in a hurry.  Now mere lies don’t cut it anymore.  Now it takes blood libel to feed the monkey.

“Obama is an illegal alien!  Obama hates white people!  Obama wants to slit granny’s throat!  We hate him, Hate him, HATE HIM!”

This isn’t party politics, this is delirium tremens, and what comes next is rigor mortis.

Liberals, moderates and even rational conservatives–those few who haven’t gone on the junk–hear this stuff and are terrified.

I can’t blame them. It is scary.  When you can’t have a town hall meeting without a shrieking, 140 decibel, bussed-in, paid-for mob doing everything in its malevolent power to scare the bejesus out of everyone and make democratic debate impossible, it’s easy to cut and run.  The fight-or-flight reflex kicks in and even the strong are tested.

Many fail.  The Blue Dogs hear the furor and turn Yellow.  “Let’s take August off and hope it all goes away.  These issues are just too contentious.”

But “the issues” have nothing to do with it.  Do we really think those mobs give a crap about the intricacies of health care reform?  Has fear made us that stupid?

The birthers, the “just say no” crowd, the “Cash for Clunkers is a failure because it worked” idiots don’t really care about any of those things.  All they want to do is hurt Obama because they hate Obama.

They hate Obama because he beat them.  That inescapable fact is what’s driving the right insane.

All they care about is driving down Obama’s poll numbers.  But why?  Seriously, my Republican brethren, are you really so delusional that you think you can beat him in 2012?  Obama is going to eat Mitt Romney and crap Bobby Jindal in three years.  What’s the point?  Don’t you have a country to help run, or would you rather run it into the ground?

The right thought it was America.  It turns out America is bigger than that.  Forty years ago the left labored under the same delusion.

Crazy-ass, bug-eyed, screaming imbeciles, drunk with hate and high on anger are always with us, on both fringes.  The terrible failure of conservative leadership today is their refusal to repudiate those foaming fanatics in the harshest, clearest words possible.

Conservatism is a serious intellectual project.  It has a long, proud history of standing foursquare against the rule of the mob.  There is only one moral response a true conservative can have, when confronted with ignorance, hatred and lies, lies, lies about the duly elected President of the United States of America: “We renounce you, root and branch.”

But they don’t because it feels too good.  The hatred is “energizing the base,” it’s “firing up the party,” it’s “bringing us back.”

No, it’s not.  It’s killing you.  And it will keep killing you until you decide you don’t want Obama to fail more than you want America to succeed.

For just a few moments of bitter joy, the Republican party is murdering itself.  Those screaming crowds, the frightened Democrats, the rising ratings of right-wing radio ranters, Obama’s slipping poll numbers!  It’s such a rush!  We can’t stop, it feels too good!

But it’s not good, my conservative friends, it’s death.  What you are feeling is the fatal bliss of autoerotic asphyxiation.

“One glance at the birthers and the town hall screamers tells you all you need to know.  You don’t even need to see it, you can hear it in their strangled cries.  The Republican party is a junkie, addicted to hate.

“The base is on fire!” the Republican spokeszombies shout, spittle flaking their bloodless lips.  ‘We’re back!” they spew, “bigger and better than ever!”

Hate is a rush, hate is a drug.  When all your plans and dreams have gone to hell, when everything you stand for has been repudiated, when the people have abandoned you and it feels like God himself has forsaken you, hate will give you a reason to live.

The problem with hate is that, like any drug, you develop a tolerance to it.  Last year a Republican mob could get into ecstasies of joy by chanting the lie “Obama is a Muslim!”  That worked for a while, but then they had to up the dose.  “Obama is a socialist!” was good for a nice hate buzz, but it got old in a hurry.  Now mere lies don’t cut it anymore.  Now it takes blood libel to feed the monkey.

“Obama is an illegal alien!  Obama hates white people!  Obama wants to slit granny’s throat!  We hate him, Hate him, HATE HIM!”

This isn’t party politics, this is delirium tremens, and what comes next is rigor mortis.

Liberals, moderates and even rational conservatives–those few who haven’t gone on the junk–hear this stuff and are terrified.

I can’t blame them. It is scary.  When you can’t have a town hall meeting without a shrieking, 140 decibel, bussed-in, paid-for mob doing everything in its malevolent power to scare the bejesus out of everyone and make democratic debate impossible, it’s easy to cut and run.  The fight-or-flight reflex kicks in and even the strong are tested.

Many fail.  The Blue Dogs hear the furor and turn Yellow.  “Let’s take August off and hope it all goes away.  These issues are just too contentious.”

But “the issues” have nothing to do with it.  Do we really think those mobs give a crap about the intricacies of health care reform?  Has fear made us that stupid?

The birthers, the “just say no” crowd, the “Cash for Clunkers is a failure because it worked” idiots don’t really care about any of those things.  All they want to do is hurt Obama because they hate Obama.

They hate Obama because he beat them.  That inescapable fact is what’s driving the right insane.

All they care about is driving down Obama’s poll numbers.  But why?  Seriously, my Republican brethren, are you really so delusional that you think you can beat him in 2012?  Obama is going to eat Mitt Romney and crap Bobby Jindal in three years.  What’s the point?  Don’t you have a country to help run, or would you rather run it into the ground?

The right thought it was America.  It turns out America is bigger than that.  Forty years ago the left labored under the same delusion.

Crazy-ass, bug-eyed, screaming imbeciles, drunk with hate and high on anger are always with us, on both fringes.  The terrible failure of conservative leadership today is their refusal to repudiate those foaming fanatics in the harshest, clearest words possible.

Conservatism is a serious intellectual project.  It has a long, proud history of standing foursquare against the rule of the mob.  There is only one moral response a true conservative can have, when confronted with ignorance, hatred and lies, lies, lies about the duly elected President of the United States of America: “We renounce you, root and branch.”

But they don’t because it feels too good.  The hatred is “energizing the base,” it’s “firing up the party,” it’s “bringing us back.”

No, it’s not.  It’s killing you.  And it will keep killing you until you decide you don’t want Obama to fail more than you want America to succeed.

For just a few moments of bitter joy, the Republican party is murdering itself.  Those screaming crowds, thefrightened Democrats, the rising ratings of right-wing radio ranters, Obama’s slipping poll numbers!  It’s such a rush!  We can’t stop, it feels too good!

But it’s not good, my conservative friends, it’s death. What you are feeling is the fatal bliss of autoerotic asphyxiation.”