Tuesday, October 8, 2013
American Jesus tv) trailer
What the movie exposes is the truth that in the American religious community life goes on as if the Enlightenment had never taken place. A look at the so-called Creation Museum proves this. In what other place on earth could millions of visitors approve the obliterating rewriting of science and conclude that the world is 6000 years old and that dinosaurs coexisted with humans? In what other country is foreign policy hostage to a literal belief in events leading to the so-called return of Christ?
For the people who wonder why American foreign policy seems insane at times one answer to their questions about America is this movie. At the heart of the superpower that leads the world are many leaders who believe in cartoonish myths. American Jesus is a brilliant warning about where these cartoon characters will take us all unless challenged.
And yet American Jesus takes a compassionate look at many religious people of good will who find meaning and beauty in their spiritual faith. The movie is a tribute to them as well as a subtle warning about the political and religious leaders who seek to manipulate sincere faith for their own enrichment or worse, to gain power.
The price of a scoop is that I'm ahead of the review curve. The movie isn't out yet. I've begged the filmmakers to get this movie in front of the legions of Americans and non-Americans who will be astonished by its scope and sensitivity. But there's a protocol in securing the best possible distribution. That process is just beginning with the premiere in Woodstock.
Meanwhile, there's the website which the producers will be expanding in the coming weeks. While American Jesus is in its festival run, tune in to the website www.americanjesusthemovie.com for what I trust will be screenings near you, and so you can keep track of the commercial release soon to follow.
Then, when you get the chance, WATCH THIS MOVIE!
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and New York Times bestselling author. His new book about American religious delusion is And God Said, "Billy!" It has just been published and is available in print and on Kindle on Amazon and from Barnes and Nobel on NOOK.
The above was excerpted from a longer blog post by Frank Schaeffer and appeared in The Huffington Post here.
From Daily Kos - Thingis you gotta believe to be a Republican today
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| Thanks to Daily Kos. | |||||||||||||
Monday, October 7, 2013
Our Government Crisis
A tornado or a hurricane are crises. Katrine was one hell of a big crisis! The attack by terrorists on 9/11/2001 was a crisis. A crisis is something to avoid at all costs if at all possible. The government shutdown is certainly a crisis in the sense it is a disaster at hand and a prelude to an even large disaster to come. It is not a crisis in the sense that it was wrought by circumstances or persons out of the usual controls.
The government shutdown is A MANUFACTURED CRISIS! Lest there are normal folk or media personalities (can't really call them "reporters" anymore for they do not investigate but simply parrot whatever they are told) who still hang on to the belief or perpetuate the nonsense that "both parties are responsible" for this so-called crisis, let us be very clear: This is solely the doing of the Republicans in the House of Representatives who seem to be under the spell of a group of far-right nogoodniks who care not for their oath of office or their country but live only to serve some deranged ideology which comes more from Ayn Rand than James Madison.
These traitors (and I use that word deliberately, for they have failed to keep their sworn oath, and it is now clear they are publicly working to undermine the system of government set forth in our Constitution), who appear to actually believe their own lies and misconstructions, are bent on destroying the good faith and credit of these United States in order to achieve some short-term political goal, although even they are not sure of what that goal is.
They dislike the Affordable Care Act, which many millions of Americans have never heard of and know only as Obamacare. They have shown they will do literally anything to dismantle the ACA and "bring Obama down" (a promise made by Boehner and McConnell just 5 short years ago!).
Because the ACA, in its present form, is based on a similar health care proposal put out a few years ago by the increasingly ultra-conservative Heritage Institute and became the basis for Romney's signature healthcare law when he was governor of Massachusetts, this willingness to create financial havoc on a global scale in order to do away with what was a Republican plan makes no sense.
But their demand to dismantle the ACA makes no sense in another sense. The ACA is the law, duly passed by Congress, signed by the president, given Constitutional authority by the Supreme Court. In our country, we do not, via some sort of fiat, do away with laws of the land. We do not obey and or follow the laws we like and disobey or ignore the laws we don't like. If there is a law we feel is unfair for some reason or another, there are Constitutional methods of amending or negating that law. We do not use extortion to get our way!
The traitors in the House of representatives are extortionists and thus very, very dangerous to our system. This shutdown is not merely a financial fiasco but a political disaster and shows in no uncertain terms how far our government has fallen. It also means that we have a serious breakdown in the hinterland. Our country is filled with ignorant and stupid people who voted in the representatives responsible for the crisis!
President Obama cannot give in to the demands of these traitors for he would lose his dignity and authority and make a mockery of the presidency. Even more serious, extortionists never quit. If they are successful in one case they will continue their extortion. Tomorrow there will be another law these traitors do not like and again will use their power to shutdown the government to achieve their goal of say, dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency.
The more I think about this the more I believe the word, "traitor," is an apt name. We might even add "terrorist" for tonight in this great land, thousands of families will have a parent recently unemployed; some will go hungry, others will be unable to pay their rent; more people will suffer the dread of not knowing what terror tomorrow will bring them at the hands of these traitors and terrorists in Washington!
Some final thoughts: this is a manufactured crisis. It is not something that happened to us but rather was created by persons who are supposed to represent our best interests. Yet it does the exact opposite! It is a needless exercise in political pique!
Secondly, the Republicans don't give a rat's ass about the people of this country, no matter how many tears Mr. Boehner manufactures to make us think so. They don't care about healthcare; they don't care about the 47% or the 99%! They're afraid that if the pending provisions of the ACA take effect they are done for because the people will realize the Republicans have sold them a bill of goods about Obamacare!
So, we can only conclude other more sinister forces are at work. You will note that most of the teapot crackpots involved in manufacturing this so-called crisis come from the deep South and Texas! These are areas where racism is the norm not the exception. These areas remain pockets of unrepentant Confederates who have yet to concede the Civil War is over and who cannot abide the thought of a black man in the White House!
But because racism is everywhere, Obama remains a problem in every area where the people refuse to believe that when Jesus said "love your neighbor as yourself," he meant black or brown neighbors, too.
And we must not forget that these areas of our country are also where the schools are least effective. Texas, for example, is at the bottom of almost every educational scale. Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, are also bottom feeders! In other words, ignorance reigns. In these states many folks reject science and live by mythologies - evolution is inconceivable, Adam and Eve were real people, they are god's chillun and the rest of the world are heathens and thus, suspect.
Ignorance breeds stupidity. Stupid people elect stupid representatives. That's why the state of Georgia elected a Republican member of the House of Representatives who had the unmitigated gall to stand up and say "You lie!" to the president of the United States! But even Minnesota has enough stupids to elect Michele Bachmann! There are too many stupids everywhere!
For the moment, it seems the stupids are in control. But they need not be. There are still a few Republicans who sense that the cliff looming ahead is not going to lead to a perfect view but a disastrous fall. The crisis, being created, can be easily and quickly dismantled if the few intelligent and responsible adults left in Congress can gather the courage to do what is right. The crisis is not necessary.
The Democrats are not responsible. President Obama is not responsible.
The crisis we call the government shutdown derives directly from Republicans in the House of Representatives. They are the problem. Perhaps the people will wake up and make sure they are never re-elected to any public office again.
The Golden Dawn Murder Case - by Greg Palast
The Golden Dawn Murder Case
Larry Summers and the New Fascism
By Greg Palast for Truthout
Monday, 7 October 2013
On September 18, hip-hop artist Pavlos Fyssas, a.k.a. Killah P, was stabbed outside a bar in Keratsini, Greece.
Larry Summers has an air-tight alibi. But I don't believe it.
Larry didn’t hold the knife: The confessed killer is some twisted member of Golden Dawn, a political party made up of skin-head freaks, anti-immigrant fear-mongers, anti-Muslim/ anti-Semitic/ anti-Albanian sociopaths and ultra-patriot fruitcakes. Think of it as the Tea Party goes Greek.
Following Fyssas’ killing, other groups of dangerous psychopathic misfits, namely the European Union and Greece’s governing coalition, moved to ban Golden Dawn.
Over the weekend, Greece’s rulers arrested six members of Parliament who belong to Golden Dawn. Apparently, Greece’s political leaders prefer democracy as defined by Egypt’s General Sisi to the precepts of Aristotle and Thomas Jefferson.
To my friends on the Greek Left: It’s sickening to watch you cheer the arrest of Golden Dawn parliamentarians.
Mark my words: You are next.
Listen up:
My investigation reveals that behind the banning of Golden Dawn, besides the usual European distaste for democracy, is something far more sinister: the ruling parties are distracting the public from their own involvement in the crime.
The rise in violence and hate-crimes is no surprise. The official unemployment rate in Greece is 28%, and over 60% among young men. No wonder desperate youths are wrapping batons in Greek flags and beating immigrants: When people are pressed to the wall, they hunt for their tormentors –– and too often find their fellow victims to blame.
Economic devastation breeds fascism. In the 1930s, the hungry and angry sought relief in hyper-patriotism, racism and pogroms. In the 1980s Reagan Recession in the USA, when factories shut down in the Midwest, the hopeless unemployed joined right-wing skinhead cults and went on a killing rampage –– beginning with the murder of Jewish journalist Alan Berg and ending with the bombing of a government building in Oklahoma, killing 168 people.
Vultures Over Athens
Golden Dawn is a symptom of the nation's illness, not its cause. Unfortunately, the Brown-shirts go after easy targets –– Pakistanis, Gypsies, Africans, whoever is different and easy to whack. It's a lot easier to stab a hip-hop rapper than it is to go after a hedge-fund shark.
The
real culprits behind the suffering are well camouflaged. So let me
name some: In Greece, we begin with billionaires Kenneth Dart and Paul
“The Vulture” Singer.
Dart and Singer bought up Greek government bonds for pennies on the dollar. While the holders of 97% of Greek bonds agreed to accept a loss of 75% of their value, Dart and Singer demanded several hundred percent more than they paid. Then Dart and Singer threatened the dead-broke Greek government. If Greece did not pay this ransom, Dart and Singer would declare Greek bonds in default. Every bank in Europe holding these government debts as reserve funds would face technical bankruptcy; the value of government bonds worldwide would implode in value and the entire hemisphere would face a new financial collapse.
It was financial terrorism, and the Greek government gave in. It paid the full ransom demanded. Dart grabbed over half a billion dollars ($513 million) from the Greek treasury –– and only the gods know how much Singer has pocketed.
[Get the full story on Singer the Vulture, read Billionaires & Ballot Bandits and Vultures' Picnic.]
How was this vulture food paid for? With “austerity” — tightening a belt that’s already not much bigger than its buckle. To pay Singer and Dart, the Greek government announced it would fire 15,000 workers.
What’s sick is that the ruling coalition (or misruling coalition) does not say this is to cover the payoffs to the vultures. Rather, the government says it is the just punishment Greeks deserve for their "laziness and greed." The victims’ punishment is called, “austerity.”
The Austerity Fairy Tale
My children often ask me, “Daddy, where does ‘austerity’ come from?” And I tell them:
Once upon a time, there was a good fairy named John Maynard Keynes. He wanted to stop depressions, financial crises and suffering, so he conceived of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He said, When a nation’s foreign exchange earnings drop (say, if the price of oil rises or Greek tourism falls because its currency is over-valued), the countries taking the poor nations’ money, rich countries like Germany and the USA, would lend it back via the IMF.
By this rule, the rich lending to the poor, the world prospered and lived happily ever after … until the 1980s, when a wicked witch, known as the Iron Lady, and America’s gaga grandpa, Reagan of the Rich, insisted that the IMF and the World Bank beat poor nations with a stick called, “structural adjustment.”
Nations facing destitution because of higher oil costs, currency imbalance or predatory interest rate demands were “structurally adjusted.” Structural adjustment is a cruel and debilitating potion of mass firings of public employees, cheap sell-offs of national assets and deregulation of corporate profiteering. This ripping the wings off the better angels of government is called, “austerity.”
The good fairy Keynes had warned about this evil potion, this snake oil called “austerity.” Cutting government spending during a recession, he said, will only make things worse.
And that’s what happened: In every single case, the “adjusted” nations’ economies were devastated.
Structural adjustment reached its cruel apotheosis in the early 1990s under the guidance of the World Bank’s Chief Economist, one Larry Summers.
But then, in 1997, Summers’ post was taken by Prof. Joseph Stiglitz.
In 2001, I met Stiglitz whom I’d heard was quietly expressing grave doubts about austerity and structural adjustment à la Summers. He agreed to go public. Over several hours of discussion, which I recorded for BBC TV, Stiglitz charged that IMF-imposed austerity was “ a little like the Middle Ages, when the patient died they would say well, we stopped the bloodletting too soon, he still had a little blood in him.”
Stiglitz detailed for me the ill effects of the “structural adjustment” demands, including “free” trade, which he likened to the Opium Wars; bank deregulation, which he found ludicrously dangerous; privatization, which Stiglitz called “briberization”; and budget-cutting austerity.
The budget cuts and free-market nostrums, Stiglitz told me, were as cruel as they were stupid. And he said of those who profited off these IMF diktats, “They don’t care if people live or die.”
Stiglitz went on to win the Nobel Prize in economics for his skepticism of Markets über Alles.
So how, a decade after austerity, briberization and all their cruelties exposed and discredited, did Greece (and Spain and Portugal and too many others) end up under austerity’s bloody grip?
To begin with, in 2000, Larry Summers, as US Treasury Secretary, successfully demanded the World Bank fire Stiglitz and purged the Bank and IMF of austerity apostasy.
Why? Austerity may fail the public, but it’s damn profitable for those on the inside.
All you need is a riot and a few dead bodies.
The IMF Riots
Among Stiglitz’ stunning revelations to me was his description of “the IMF riot.” I showed him confidential World Bank and IMF plans for the nation of Ecuador. These included what seemed to be a warning to that nation’s finance minister that austerity could lead to violence in the streets, “social unrest” — which the World Bank recommended be crushed with “resolve”. In Ecuador, “resolve” meant tanks.
Did the IMF really write the riots into the plans?
Yes, Stiglitz said, matter-of-factly. “We had a name for it ‘The IMF Riot’”.
When a nation is “down and out, [the IMF] takes advantage and squeezes the last pound of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole caldron blows up”.
And that’s what we’re seeing in Greece. It began in May 2010, when some sick, misguided berserker set fire to a bank in Athens and killed four bank employees. The killings did the trick: the Left’s protests against insane austerity and banker gangsterism came to a halt.
Still, people could see that the austerity medicine was making Greece ill. So, they put their hopes in a new party, Syriza, which, from nowhere, became the second highest vote-getter in Greece by promising to oppose austerity. Once in office, the faux-Left Syriza completely sold out its positions.
That leaves Golden Dawn, although diseased by racism and violently bent, it is the only one of Greece’s top four parties to stand firm against rabid austerity and the economy being chained like a beaten dog to Germany’s currency.
In 2010, the bank burning was used to discredit protests by the Left. Today, once again, the Greek government, dancing on its hind legs, begging for a biscuit from German bankers, has used a murder as an excuse to outlaw the only major party dissenting from the austerity suicide pact.
I wish I could say that the reason Golden Dawn is being banned is because of the violent bend of its racist followers. But that’s just not what’s going on here.
Dimitris Kazakis, the leader of Greece’s true progressive party, the United People’s Front (EPAM), has spoken out against Golden Dawn’s racist violence — and the greater danger of the bogus charges created to arrest members of Parliament. He scolds Greeks, reminding them that this is how the military dictatorship seized power in 1967.
So, who are the real Fascists?
Fascism, as defined since the days of Il Duce, is the official combine of government and big business. By that definition, Golden Dawn is the only non-Fascist party among Greece’s top four. And that is why Golden Dawn has been targeted for elimination.
I hope my fellow progressives will excuse me for not applauding.
Larry Summers and the New Fascism
By Greg Palast for Truthout
Monday, 7 October 2013
On September 18, hip-hop artist Pavlos Fyssas, a.k.a. Killah P, was stabbed outside a bar in Keratsini, Greece.Larry Summers has an air-tight alibi. But I don't believe it.
Larry didn’t hold the knife: The confessed killer is some twisted member of Golden Dawn, a political party made up of skin-head freaks, anti-immigrant fear-mongers, anti-Muslim/ anti-Semitic/ anti-Albanian sociopaths and ultra-patriot fruitcakes. Think of it as the Tea Party goes Greek.
Following Fyssas’ killing, other groups of dangerous psychopathic misfits, namely the European Union and Greece’s governing coalition, moved to ban Golden Dawn.
Over the weekend, Greece’s rulers arrested six members of Parliament who belong to Golden Dawn. Apparently, Greece’s political leaders prefer democracy as defined by Egypt’s General Sisi to the precepts of Aristotle and Thomas Jefferson.
To my friends on the Greek Left: It’s sickening to watch you cheer the arrest of Golden Dawn parliamentarians.
Mark my words: You are next.
Listen up:
My investigation reveals that behind the banning of Golden Dawn, besides the usual European distaste for democracy, is something far more sinister: the ruling parties are distracting the public from their own involvement in the crime.
The rise in violence and hate-crimes is no surprise. The official unemployment rate in Greece is 28%, and over 60% among young men. No wonder desperate youths are wrapping batons in Greek flags and beating immigrants: When people are pressed to the wall, they hunt for their tormentors –– and too often find their fellow victims to blame.
Economic devastation breeds fascism. In the 1930s, the hungry and angry sought relief in hyper-patriotism, racism and pogroms. In the 1980s Reagan Recession in the USA, when factories shut down in the Midwest, the hopeless unemployed joined right-wing skinhead cults and went on a killing rampage –– beginning with the murder of Jewish journalist Alan Berg and ending with the bombing of a government building in Oklahoma, killing 168 people.
Vultures Over Athens
Golden Dawn is a symptom of the nation's illness, not its cause. Unfortunately, the Brown-shirts go after easy targets –– Pakistanis, Gypsies, Africans, whoever is different and easy to whack. It's a lot easier to stab a hip-hop rapper than it is to go after a hedge-fund shark.
The
real culprits behind the suffering are well camouflaged. So let me
name some: In Greece, we begin with billionaires Kenneth Dart and Paul
“The Vulture” Singer.Dart and Singer bought up Greek government bonds for pennies on the dollar. While the holders of 97% of Greek bonds agreed to accept a loss of 75% of their value, Dart and Singer demanded several hundred percent more than they paid. Then Dart and Singer threatened the dead-broke Greek government. If Greece did not pay this ransom, Dart and Singer would declare Greek bonds in default. Every bank in Europe holding these government debts as reserve funds would face technical bankruptcy; the value of government bonds worldwide would implode in value and the entire hemisphere would face a new financial collapse.
It was financial terrorism, and the Greek government gave in. It paid the full ransom demanded. Dart grabbed over half a billion dollars ($513 million) from the Greek treasury –– and only the gods know how much Singer has pocketed.
[Get the full story on Singer the Vulture, read Billionaires & Ballot Bandits and Vultures' Picnic.]
How was this vulture food paid for? With “austerity” — tightening a belt that’s already not much bigger than its buckle. To pay Singer and Dart, the Greek government announced it would fire 15,000 workers.
What’s sick is that the ruling coalition (or misruling coalition) does not say this is to cover the payoffs to the vultures. Rather, the government says it is the just punishment Greeks deserve for their "laziness and greed." The victims’ punishment is called, “austerity.”
The Austerity Fairy Tale
My children often ask me, “Daddy, where does ‘austerity’ come from?” And I tell them:
Once upon a time, there was a good fairy named John Maynard Keynes. He wanted to stop depressions, financial crises and suffering, so he conceived of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He said, When a nation’s foreign exchange earnings drop (say, if the price of oil rises or Greek tourism falls because its currency is over-valued), the countries taking the poor nations’ money, rich countries like Germany and the USA, would lend it back via the IMF.
By this rule, the rich lending to the poor, the world prospered and lived happily ever after … until the 1980s, when a wicked witch, known as the Iron Lady, and America’s gaga grandpa, Reagan of the Rich, insisted that the IMF and the World Bank beat poor nations with a stick called, “structural adjustment.”
Nations facing destitution because of higher oil costs, currency imbalance or predatory interest rate demands were “structurally adjusted.” Structural adjustment is a cruel and debilitating potion of mass firings of public employees, cheap sell-offs of national assets and deregulation of corporate profiteering. This ripping the wings off the better angels of government is called, “austerity.”
The good fairy Keynes had warned about this evil potion, this snake oil called “austerity.” Cutting government spending during a recession, he said, will only make things worse.
And that’s what happened: In every single case, the “adjusted” nations’ economies were devastated.
Structural adjustment reached its cruel apotheosis in the early 1990s under the guidance of the World Bank’s Chief Economist, one Larry Summers.
But then, in 1997, Summers’ post was taken by Prof. Joseph Stiglitz.
In 2001, I met Stiglitz whom I’d heard was quietly expressing grave doubts about austerity and structural adjustment à la Summers. He agreed to go public. Over several hours of discussion, which I recorded for BBC TV, Stiglitz charged that IMF-imposed austerity was “ a little like the Middle Ages, when the patient died they would say well, we stopped the bloodletting too soon, he still had a little blood in him.”
Stiglitz detailed for me the ill effects of the “structural adjustment” demands, including “free” trade, which he likened to the Opium Wars; bank deregulation, which he found ludicrously dangerous; privatization, which Stiglitz called “briberization”; and budget-cutting austerity.
The budget cuts and free-market nostrums, Stiglitz told me, were as cruel as they were stupid. And he said of those who profited off these IMF diktats, “They don’t care if people live or die.”
Stiglitz went on to win the Nobel Prize in economics for his skepticism of Markets über Alles.
So how, a decade after austerity, briberization and all their cruelties exposed and discredited, did Greece (and Spain and Portugal and too many others) end up under austerity’s bloody grip?
To begin with, in 2000, Larry Summers, as US Treasury Secretary, successfully demanded the World Bank fire Stiglitz and purged the Bank and IMF of austerity apostasy.
Why? Austerity may fail the public, but it’s damn profitable for those on the inside.
All you need is a riot and a few dead bodies.
The IMF Riots
Among Stiglitz’ stunning revelations to me was his description of “the IMF riot.” I showed him confidential World Bank and IMF plans for the nation of Ecuador. These included what seemed to be a warning to that nation’s finance minister that austerity could lead to violence in the streets, “social unrest” — which the World Bank recommended be crushed with “resolve”. In Ecuador, “resolve” meant tanks.
Did the IMF really write the riots into the plans?
Yes, Stiglitz said, matter-of-factly. “We had a name for it ‘The IMF Riot’”.
When a nation is “down and out, [the IMF] takes advantage and squeezes the last pound of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole caldron blows up”.
And that’s what we’re seeing in Greece. It began in May 2010, when some sick, misguided berserker set fire to a bank in Athens and killed four bank employees. The killings did the trick: the Left’s protests against insane austerity and banker gangsterism came to a halt.
Still, people could see that the austerity medicine was making Greece ill. So, they put their hopes in a new party, Syriza, which, from nowhere, became the second highest vote-getter in Greece by promising to oppose austerity. Once in office, the faux-Left Syriza completely sold out its positions.
That leaves Golden Dawn, although diseased by racism and violently bent, it is the only one of Greece’s top four parties to stand firm against rabid austerity and the economy being chained like a beaten dog to Germany’s currency.
In 2010, the bank burning was used to discredit protests by the Left. Today, once again, the Greek government, dancing on its hind legs, begging for a biscuit from German bankers, has used a murder as an excuse to outlaw the only major party dissenting from the austerity suicide pact.
I wish I could say that the reason Golden Dawn is being banned is because of the violent bend of its racist followers. But that’s just not what’s going on here.
Dimitris Kazakis, the leader of Greece’s true progressive party, the United People’s Front (EPAM), has spoken out against Golden Dawn’s racist violence — and the greater danger of the bogus charges created to arrest members of Parliament. He scolds Greeks, reminding them that this is how the military dictatorship seized power in 1967.
So, who are the real Fascists?
Fascism, as defined since the days of Il Duce, is the official combine of government and big business. By that definition, Golden Dawn is the only non-Fascist party among Greece’s top four. And that is why Golden Dawn has been targeted for elimination.
I hope my fellow progressives will excuse me for not applauding.
* * * * *
For more by Greg Palast, click here.
Gre
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Friday, October 4, 2013
Thursday, October 3, 2013
An Alfred HItchock documentary on the Nazi Holocaust
Mr. Hitchcock made this documentary just after the end of World War II. Six million Jews were tortured and murdered in the various concentration camps and elsewhere. Five million other people were also tortured and murdered because they were homosexuals, or "enemies of the state," or retarded, etc. This was the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany.
Hitchcock never did finish the project, partly because it was thought to be too difficult to watch.
But, we must never forget.
The video is rather long but is worth every minute. For today, anti-Semitism is rearing its ugly head once again in many places around the world. In most all Arab/Muslim countries, Jews are not allowed to enter much less live and work. But even in countries such as France and Sweden and the United States anti-Semitism is growing.
Thanks to Emma at The Underground UnBeliever for calling my attention to this video.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Gun Control - A Senatorial Wall of Shame
Gun control, largely because of the nasty machinations of the National Rifle Association, is a huge furball for this country. Intelligent consideration as to how we might deal with the proliferation of deadly weapons in what we hope to be a peaceful society cannot take place without the frantic howling of the NRA and its minions.
And because the NRA has so much money and because the NRA has been able to buy so many of our politicians, we are unable to initiate or even discuss any laws related to gun control. The NRA wants no controls whatsoever for any reason on any type of weapon. The NRA, walking lockstep with the gun manufacturers, makes for a powerful lobbying group that pressures politicians in every section of our country. It seems to be nigh impossible for a person to be elected to any office without bowing at the altar of the NRA.
That, however, is no excuse for our representatives to sell their souls. If they are afraid of the NRA and vote against their consciences to gain the support of the NRA they should be in another line of work!
Gun control raises many questions: Who should be allowed to own a gun? What type of weapon is appropriate? How many guns should one person have? What kind of ammunition should be allowed? Should weapons be concealed or carried openly? Should convicted felons be allowed to own a gun? What about those who have been judged to be mentally ill?
Then there's the problem of the Internet, where just about anyone for any reason can purchase a weapon and however much ammo as he or she so desires.
Thus the need for background checks! What could possibly be wrong with checking the background of a person who asks to purchase a deadly weapon? Such a check wouldn't weed out all the bad guys, but it just might stop a nut who decides it's time to get some guns and go kill a few people.
Unfortunately, 47 of those people sitting in the United States Senate disagree. The senators listed below voted against background checks! Thus they pay back the NRA for its largesse.
Here's the Senate Wall of Shame:
Lamar Alexander - R-Va
Kelly Ayote - R-NH
John Barrasso - R-Wyo
Max Baucus - D-Mont
Mark Begich - D-Alaska
Roy Blunt - R-Mo
John Boozman - R-Ark
Richard Burr - R-NC
Saxby Chambliss - R-Ga
Dan Coats -R-Ind
Tom Coburn - R-Okla
Thad Cochran - R-Miss
Bob Corker - R-Tenn
John Cornyn - R-Tx
Mike Crapo - R-Idaho
Ted Cruz - R-Tx
Mike Enzi - R-Wyo
Deb Fischer - R-Neb
Jeff Flake - R-Ariz
Lindsey Graham - R-SC
Chuck Grassley - R-Iowa
Orin Hatch - R-Utah
Heidi Heitkamp - D-N.D.
Dean Heller - R - Nev
John Hoeven - R-N.D.
James Inhofe - R-Okla
Johnny Isakson - R-Ga
Mike Johanns - R-Neb
Ron Johnson - R-Wis
Mike Lee - R-Utah
Mitch McConnell - R-Ky
Jerry Moran - R-Kan
Lisa Murkowski - R-Alaska
Rand Paul - R-Ky
Rob Portman - R-Ohio
Mark Pryor - D-Ark
Harry Reid - D-Nev
Jim Risch - R-Idaho
Pat Roberts - R-Kan
Marco Rubio - R-Fla
Tim Scott - R-SC
Jess Sessions - R-Alaska
Richard Shelby - R-Ala
John Thune - R-S.D.
David Vitter - R-La
Roger Wicker - R-Miss
Notice the Republicans dominate the list. Unfortunately, the names of a few Democrats also appear.
Rick Perry - a truly dumb hypocrite
The governor of Texas, Rick Perry, who once suggested Texas might secede from the Union (which shows how dumb he is as secession is impossible), is now calling the implementation of the Affordable Care Act a "criminal" act!
The U.S. Congress passed the act, the president signed it and the U.S. Supremes (a majority of which are on the conservative side of things) declared it to be constitutional. So what is criminal about it? If Perry is right, then the Congress, the president and the Supreme Court are criminals.
But Perry, of course, is not right. He's just plain dumb, dumb, dumb. Unfortunately, he is just one of thousands of our public officials who are dumber than the proverbial doorknob!
He's also mean, vicious even. One of every four people in Texas is uninsured. It's the highest rate of uninsured people in the country! But Perry has rejected he Affordable Care Act provisions for the people of his state.
Perry is not only dumb but a hypocrite! At the same time he is calling the Affordable Care Act a criminal enterprise, Texas officials are working with the federal government to get $100 million in benefits from the ACA for their elderly!
If anyone is a criminal, it's Mr. Perry, who has violated his oath to serve all the people in the state of Texas, not just the rich and mighty!
And this clown says he loves Jesus!
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Larry Klayman to force Obama's ouster on Nov. 19
Klayman does not like President Obama. He dislikes the president so much he will tell any lie or go to any length to try to drive Obama out of office. The thought that Obama the usurper will remain in the White House until 2016 drives Klayman wild.
Back on September 16, writing for RenewAmerica (another far right-wing rag), Klayman said this:
"On Sept. 11, 2013, a dangerous and viral strain of Muslims invaded Washington, D.C., to march and declare victory over Christians and Jews and to otherwise thumb their noses at everyone who does not believe in allah [sic.]"
Well, whatever it was, it wasn't a very successful march, because, as Klayman noted, "only 30 or so had the 'courage' to actually appear on the streets of D.C., having been surrounded by a horde of 'Rolling Thunder' Harley Davidson motorcycle riders, and despite the fact that the Muslims secured a permit and the motorcyclists were denied one by Barack Hussein Obama's National Park Service..."
It is time, claims Klayman, that "we Christians, Jews, people of faith and all true patriots say enough is enough and ourselves, in a very real way, 'Occupy Washington' to cleanse the nation of the half-Muslim, anti-white, socialist fraud in the White House before the nation goes under for the final count."
When I read crap like this I realize once again that the distance between people like Klayman and the Nazis is very, very small.
But Klayman is just getting started. In spite of the "growing list of 'phony' Obama scandals, ranging from Benghazi-gate, to IRS-gate, to Navy SEAL Team VI-gate, to Fast and Furious-gate, to NSA-gate, to name just a few, it is clear that our elected representatives do not have the will or courage to remove the mullah-in-chief from office."
Not only so, but Obama has a "pro-Islamic desire to intervene to 'save' his radical Muslim al-Qaida 'freedom fighters' by bombing Syria." So, we must act now! And, claims KKKlayman, "Impeachment is not an option" because Congress will not take the ball and run with it.
Neither is our court system of much use. "[...] there is no one on the bench who will stand up to the president" even though he has a phony birth certificate and lacks "having two American-born citizen parents as required by our Constitution." The Constitution does not require the latter, as Klayman well knows, but he also knows that most of our citizens are ignoramuses and that he can get by with the lie!
Because the Congress and the judges will not deal with the problem of this "half-Muslim" in the White House, Klayman recommends "Freedom Watch's citizens' grand juries, which are indicting and trying political felons like Obama as we speak. In this regard, a conviction is near in the case of the Obama for eligibility fraud.
"Once convicted, We the People will have the right to enforce this conviction and demand that Obama surrender himself to the people's system of justice or incarceration. Will he do so voluntarily? Obviously not! His arrogance and disrespect for American law - just look at how his attorney general has flaunted it - and his apparent allegiance to Shariah law make this more than unlikely ...
"I therefore call upon all American patriots ... to converge on Washington. Millions should stand in front of the White House and other national treasures and demand that Barack Hussein Obama leave. If the Egyptians can do this with regard to another radical Muslim, former president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, then can't we Americans do it with Obama?
"And, when we do converge on and 'Occupy Washington' in the millions on a date to be announced for the week before Thanksgiving, the people may think about chanting: 'Mr. President (to use the term loosely), put the Quran down, get up off your knees and come out with your hands up!'
Klayman says no shots will be fired and the "fraudster" Obama "who stole the presidency" and has greatly harmed this country "will finally know that his time has come to leave his perverted, Islamic concept of Mecca, our nation's hallowed capital."
He does not advocate violence, claims KKKlayman, but Obama "would be well advised to ride off into his Islamic sunset, link up with 72 virgins and party on at his expense - not ours."
Well, Obama was indicted on Sept. 18 by a citizens' grand jury in Ocala, Florida, and he was convicted of fraud - the use of a fraudulent birth certificate to prove he was eligible for the office of the presidency. A citizens' judge gave him 10 years and the president was ordered to surrender.
But, says Klayman, Obama hasn't and won't surrender. He'll "attempt to hide behind the iron fences of the White House, perhaps cowering under his desk for fear that the people will rise up and demand his ouster."
On November 19, KKKlayman wants "millions of Americans who have been appalled and disgusted by Obama's criminality - his Muslim, socialist, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-white, pro-illegal immigrant, pro-radical gay and lesbian agenda - among other outrages' to show up in the capital and demand that Obama resign or go to jail!
KKKlayman thinks Obama is running our founder's ideals into the ground. He's even worse than ol' King George III. "King George III may have been a greedy 'control freak,' but at least he was a Christian," says Mr. Klayman. Now "The United States is being run by a Muslim bent on furthering an Islamic caliphate who seeks to destroy our spirituality and the body politic of our Judeo-Christian roots."
Several observations:
Klayman is neither stupid nor ignorant. He has to know that President Obama is none of the things Klayman has accused him of being. He has to know that Obama is not Muslim but Christian and a man who takes his faith seriously and tries to live according to the admonitions of Scripture. He also has to know that Obama's birth certificate is as valid as any birth certificate can be. Furthermore, there's no cause to call Obama anti-Semitic for there's no evidence of any kind for such a claim. The claim that he's "anti-white" is laughable! Obama's half-white! How could he love half of himself and hate the other half?
To say that the president has a "pro-illegal immigrant, pro-radical gay and lesbian agenda" says more about KKKlayman than Obama.
All of which means that Klayman is the worst of the worst. He is a man who would demean a president duly elected by the American people; a man who is far from perfect, but has worked hard to help the country revive itself after eight years of war which involved profligate spending, a financial system run amok by virtue of not being regulated, a recession derived from cutting taxes on the wealthy and allowing Wall Street to destroy the housing industry with its financial shenanigans.
What drives someone like Klayman to perpetrate such evil? Is it possible that he hates Obama so much because Obama is not only only half-white but also half-black?
Monday, September 30, 2013
Only Crazy People and Tea Party Crackpots Burn Down Their Own Houses
It's one thing to burn down your own house. Granted, you have to be crazy to do it, or perhaps merely a criminal.
But to burn down a village takes the mentality of a sociopath.
If you want a vision of that kind of mentality, take a close look at Ted Cruz reading Dr. Seuss on the Senate floor and listen to his 21 hour of rambling verbal pomposity, filled with lies. And then look at the cult of congressmen and congresswomen marching lockstep behind him.
Mr. Cruz seems to have no problem burning down his house, the United States of America. Although it raises the question as to why someone would want to be a United States senator when he hates his country and democracy so much? If he hates the government so much why would he want to be part of it? Burning down the house, i.e., shutting down the government has drastic negative implications for millions of American citizens, the same people who by a majority voted Mr. Obama to be president for a 2nd term; who rallied behind his cry for healthcare reform; and who elected representatives which created and passed the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Cruz must hate all of them, too.
He's not only a demagogue but a dictator in training. He does not agree with, nor care about, nor accept a democratic country and a democratic government.
Alternet.org printed a story today about the noted economist, Paul Krugman. Krugman had some angry words for those Republicans who would hold the country hostage in order to get their way relative to government spending and the debt ceiling.
A shutdown of the government would be devastating to our economy "still reeling from recession."
But worse is the damage inflicted on the world allowing the country to go into default "because of a refusal to raise the debt ceiling." Here's what Krugman said:
"Hitting the ceiling would force a huge, immediate spending cut, almost surely pushing America back into recession. Beyond that, failure to raise the ceiling would mean missed payments on existing U.S. government debt. And that might have terrifying consequences ... [because] ... Financial markets have long treated U.S. bonds as the ultimate safe asset...Now suppose it became clear that U.S. bonds weren't safe, that America couldn't be counted on to honor its debts after all. Suddenly, the whole system would be disrupted."
And such a disruption would create financial havoc around the world!
House Republicans led by dictator Cruz, are ready to shut down the world in order to recall a law dutifully enacted through the democratic process. Let's say that President Obama gave in to their demands. What would they want next? Would they demand that all sitting federal judges who are Democrats be replaced by Republicans? Would they demand that DOMA be reinstated as the law of the land, that contraception be outlawed, that Christianity become the religion of the country, that we bomb Iran or Syria or any other country they dislike? Where would it end?
Finally, some questions: Are there any adults working in the House of Representatives? Do any members of the House of Representatives have an IQ over 70? Are there any patriots left?
If our system is so dysfunctional, so broken, that the adults in Congress cannot override the stupidities of the crazies we are in deep ca-ca! For the crazies not only want to burn down their own house but houses all over the world!
Hillary Cllinton - our first lesbian president?
Just when you think the crazies can't get any crazier, we get something like this from Bryan Fischer, spokesman for the America Family Association. He believes Hillary is "too old" and "too saggy" to be elected president, but if she were...well, she would be our first lesbian president!
Thanks to RightWingWatch.org.
Thanks to RightWingWatch.org.
Dr. Arieh Eldad's True Story
The Hadassah Ein Kerem University Hospital
I was instrumental in establishing the Israeli National Skin Bank, which is the largest in the world. The National Skin Bank stores skin for every day needs as well as for war time or mass casualty situations.
This skin bank is hosted at the Hadassah Ein Kerem University hospital in Jerusalem where I was the Chairman of plastic surgery.
This is how I was asked to supply skin for an Arab woman from Gaza , who was hospitalized in Soroka Hospital in Beersheva, after her family burned her. Usually, such atrocities happen among Arab families when the women are suspected of having an affair.
We supplied all the needed Homografts for her treatment. She was successfully treated by my friend and colleague, Prof. Lior Rosenberg and discharged to return to Gaza . She was invited for regular follow-up visits to the outpatient clinic in Beersheva.
One day she was caught at a border crossing wearing a suicide belt. She meant to explode herself in the outpatient clinic of the hospital where they saved her life. It seems that her family promised her that if she did that, they would forgive her.
This is only one example of the war between Jews and Muslims in the Land of Israel . It is not a territorial conflict. This is a civilizational conflict, or rather a war between civilization & barbarism.
Dr Arieh Eldad
http://www.snopes.com/politics/israel/eldad.asp
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Obamacare Explained in Two Minutes
This video was put together by Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post to explain how Obamacare is going to work when the new insurance exchanges open for enrollment on October 1.
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