Crazy For God by Frank Shaeffer

I am appreciative of the comment below that this author left me

about his new book after reading my post. Peace ~ Molly

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Crazy for God: How I Grew Up As One of the Elect,

Helped Found the Religious Right

and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back

Frank Schaeffer was "Crazy for God," But Then He Came to His Senses:

He Recently Made a Devastating Critique on Cable TV

of the Christian Right His Parents Helped Develop

http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/1521

Recently Frank Schaefer launched a decimating attack on the religious right on cable television that has been caroming around the Internet.

Schaefer, the son of founders or the religous right (although from an odd nuance of spartan Puritan self-denial), came to know the leaders of the religous right - and leading GOP politicians including Bush and Reagan --personally before he saw the light. As a result, he has an informed perspective when he says:

"And the fact of the matter is, I think we have come through a very, very bad time and unfortunately, I'm sorry to say, my dad and I, when I was a young man and he in his career had a lot to do with it. Because we were the people, who along with others like James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and the others, we put all of this crap in place. And now the reason I wrote "Crazy for God" is because the title is literally that if awe approach God in a certain way, it will drive you crazy. And this has been a period of craziness."

More: http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/1521

Other resources:

http://www.frankschaeffer.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-God-Helped-Religious-Almost/dp/0786718919

FDL Book Salon Welcomes Frank Schaeffer: Crazy For God

http://www.frankschaeffer.net/crazyforgod.html

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Whether you believe in God or not does not matter so much,

whether you believe in Buddha or not does not matter so much.

You must lead a good life.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples;

no need for complicated philosophy.

Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

~ HH the Dalai Lama

The Threat Is Real: Why Right-Wing Rage at Townhall Meetings Could Quickly Turn Deadly

By Frank Schaeffer, AlterNet.

Posted August 12, 2009.

The insurance industry has agitated the far right to prevent health reform,

but they don't know whom they're messing with.

From the Internet to Sarah Palin this strange claim is being made: President Barack Obama wants to kill the elderly and the infirm with his health care plan. Palin even said her Down syndrome child would be a target.

The claim is being repeated, or rather screamed, by angry groups invading town hall meetings that congresspeople have organized to discuss health care reform. How on earth can the outright lie that health-care reform will lead to the euthanasia of the elderly be accepted by anyone, even by those on the far anti-Obama right?

I happen to have the answer to this question.

Over 30 years ago, my family helped start the myth leading to the present bizarre turn of events. From the mid-1970s to mid1980s, I was an activist on the far right, an evangelical and a Republican. I quit the movement by the late 1980s. (Disclosure: I'm now a supporter of President Obama and health care reform.)

To understand what is happening today in town hall meetings invaded by angry mobs convinced that their representatives are part of a conspiracy to force the elderly to forgo care, you have to understand what we, the founders of the pro-life movement, set in motion.

More: http://www.alternet.org/rights/141925/the_threat_is_real:_why_right-wing_rage_at_townhall_meetings_could_quickly_turn_deadly_/

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Fundamentalism isn't about religion. It's about power.

~ Salman Rushdie

You who are journalists, writers, citizens, you have the right and duty to say to those you have elected that they must practice mindfulness, calm and deep listening, and loving speech. This is universal thing, taught by all religions.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Naomi Klein: Let's Put an End to Sarah Palin-Style Capitalism

By Naomi Klein, The Progressive.

Capitalism can survive this crisis.

But the world can't survive another capitalist comeback.

The following was adapted from a speech on May 2, 2009 at The Progressive’s 100th anniversary conference and originally printed in The Progressive magazine, August 2009 issue:

We are in a progressive moment, a moment when the ground is shifting beneath our feet, and anything is possible. What we considered unimaginable about what could be said and hoped for a year ago is now possible. At a time like this, it is absolutely critical that we be as clear as we possibly can be about what it is that we want because we might just get it.

So the stakes are high.

I usually talk about the bailout in speeches these days. We all need to understand it because it is a robbery in progress, the greatest heist in monetary history. But today I'd like to take a different approach: What if the bailout actually works, what if the financial sector is saved and the economy returns to the course it was on before the crisis struck? Is that what we want? And what would that world look like?

The answer is that it would look like Sarah Palin. Hear me out, this is not a joke. I don't think we have given sufficient consideration to the meaning of the Palin moment. Think about it: Sarah Palin stepped onto the world stage as Vice Presidential candidate on August 29 at a McCain campaign rally, to much fanfare. Exactly two weeks later, on September 14, Lehman Brothers collapsed, triggering the global financial meltdown.

So in a way, Palin was the last clear expression of capitalism-as-usual before everything went south. That's quite helpful because she showed us-in that plainspoken, down-homey way of hers-the trajectory the U.S. economy was on before its current meltdown. By offering us this glimpse of a future, one narrowly avoided, Palin provides us with an opportunity to ask a core question: Do we want to go there? Do we want to save that pre-crisis system, get it back to where it was last September? Or do we want to use this crisis, and the electoral mandate for serious change delivered by the last election, to radically transform that system? We need to get clear on our answer now because we haven't had the potent combination of a serious crisis and a clear progressive democratic mandate for change since the 1930s. We use this opportunity, or we lose it.

So what was Sarah Palin telling us about capitalism-as-usual before she was so rudely interrupted by the meltdown? Let's first recall that before she came along, the U.S. public, at long last, was starting to come to grips with the urgency of the climate crisis, with the fact that our economic activity is at war with the planet, that radical change is needed immediately. We were actually having that conversation: Polar bears were on the cover of Newsweek magazine. And then in walked Sarah Palin. The core of her message was this: Those environmentalists, those liberals, those do-gooders are all wrong. You don't have to change anything. You don't have to rethink anything. Keep driving your gas-guzzling car, keep going to Wal-Mart and shop all you want. The reason for that is a magical place called Alaska. Just come up here and take all you want. "Americans," she said at the Republican National Convention, "we need to produce more of our own oil and gas. Take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska, we've got lots of both."

And the crowd at the convention responded by chanting and chanting: "Drill, baby, drill."

Watching that scene on television, with that weird creepy mixture of sex and oil and jingoism, I remember thinking: "Wow, the RNC has turned into a rally in favor of screwing Planet Earth." Literally.

More: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/141656/naomi_klein%3A_let%27s_put_an_end_to_sarah_palin-style_capitalism?obref=obnetwork

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"But what Palin was saying is what is built into the very DNA of capitalism: the idea that the world has no limits. She was saying that there is no such thing as consequences, or real-world deficits. Because there will always be another frontier, another Alaska, another bubble. Just move on and discover it. Tomorrow will never come."

~ Naomi Klein

Mad As Hell Doctors

I just learned of this website when I heard one of the doctors

interviewed on the radio.

From http://www.madashelldoctors.com/:

Mad as Hell
You CAN handle the Truth

There's no nice way to say it. The financial cost of health care is killing our citizens, hobbling our economy, crushing small business, and threatening the solvency of our government. In the meantime, the Health Care Industry is spending almost two million dollars a day lobbying Congress and manipulating public opinion to accept “reform” legislation that leaves a vicious, for-profit system intact. The "public option" is a trap. We need real reform that finds immediate savings, controls costs, and accomplishes the moral imperative of true Universal Access. A Single Payer plan is the only real path to a Health Care System that is socially, ethically and fiscally responsible. And yet, our elected officials refuse to even discuss the possibility of a Single Payer plan! If that doesn't make you mad, we recommend checking your pulse.

ON SEPTEMBER 8TH, A CARAVAN WILL CROSS AMERICA TO DELIVER A CLEAR AND SIMPLE MESSAGE TO OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS IN WASHINGTON:
HEALTH CARE FOR PEOPLE - NOT PROFIT!

More: http://www.madashelldoctors.com/

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This is how change happens, though. It is a relay race, and we're very conscious of that, that our job really is to do our part of the race, and then we pass it on, and then someone picks it up, and it keeps going. And that is how it is. And we can do this, as a planet, with the consciousness that we may not get it, you know, today, but there's always a tomorrow.

~ Alice Walker (interview broadcast on Nov. 11, 2008)

Health, Money, and Fear: A Documentary

An excellent Documentary by an emergency room doctor.

Working for Our Common Good

Posted Thursday, August 13, 2009

http://ourcommongood.blogspot.com/2009/08/health-money-and-fear.html

Health, Money and Fear

Paul Hochfeld's documentary "Health, Money and Fear" about how to fix an American health care non-system on the brink of disaster.

More: http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethicsforum/Post.aspx?id=1526

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How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment

before starting to improve the world.

~ Anne Frank

Robert Greenwald's New Powerful Video on Healthcare: Sick For Profit

The Health Insurance Racket:
Getting Rich by Denying Americans Care

http://sickforprofit.com/

UnitedHealthcare CEO Stephen Hemsley owns $744,232,068 in unexercised stock options. CIGNA’s Edward Hanway spends his holidays in a $13 million beach house in New Jersey. Meanwhile, regular Americans are routinely denied coverage for the care they need when they need it most.

Welcome to the American health insurance industry. Instead of helping policyholders attain the health security they need for their families, big insurance companies get rich by denying coverage to patients. Now they’re sending lobbyists to Washington, DC to twist the arms of lawmakers to oppose reform of the status quo. Why? Because the status quo pays.

Learn more about the glamorous lives of billionaire health insurance executives and tell us your story of being victimized by their greed. Then contribute to Brave New Films so we can continue to get the word out about the health insurance racket.

Learn more about the insurance company CEOs

Video Sick For Profit: http://sickforprofit.com/

This and other Brave New Films: http://bravenewfilms.org/

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One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

~ Maya Angelou

I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth.

~ Molly Ivins

Right-Wing Turncoat Gives the Inside Scoop on Why Conservatives Are Rampaging Town Halls

By Frank Schaeffer, AlterNet.

Posted August 7, 2009.

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 driven them over the edge. Consider Former Congressman Dick Armey. Several far right foundations and the multitrillion dollar health-insurance industry 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 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.

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.)

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.

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 Brown Shirts 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.

The last presidential election (to paraphrase Bart Simpson) "broke their brains." What else could explain their embrace of intimidation -- rather than discourse -- over the health care debate and such unsavory moments of madness as the Republicans accusing Obama and Judge Sonia Sotomayor of racism, knowing full well that they'd just destroyed their chances with the Hispanic community forever?

More: http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/141833/right-wing_turncoat_gives_the_inside_scoop_on_why_conservatives_are_rampaging_town_halls/?page=entire

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There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth,

the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings.

Fear grows in darkness;

if you think there's a bogeyman around, turn on the light.

~ Dorothy Thompson

Is the US on the Brink of Fascism?

By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future.

Posted August 7, 2009.

http://www.alternet.org/politics/141819/is_the_u.s._on_the_brink_of_fascism/

There are dangerous currents running through America's politics

and the way we confront them is crucial.

All through the dark years of the Bush Administration, progressives watched in horror as Constitutional protections vanished, nativist rhetoric ratcheted up, hate speech turned into intimidation and violence, and the president of the United States seized for himself powers only demanded by history's worst dictators. With each new outrage, the small handful of us who'd made ourselves experts on right-wing culture and politics would hear once again from worried readers: Is this it? Have we finally become a fascist state? Are we there yet?

And every time this question got asked, people like Chip Berlet and Dave Neiwert and Fred Clarkson and yours truly would look up from our maps like a parent on a long drive, and smile a wan smile of reassurance. "Wellll...we're on a bad road, and if we don't change course, we could end up there soon enough. But there's also still plenty of time and opportunity to turn back. Watch, but don't worry. As bad as this looks: no -- we are not there yet."

In tracking the mileage on this trip to perdition, many of us relied on the work of historian Robert Paxton, who is probably the world's pre-eminent scholar on the subject of how countries turn fascist. In a 1998 paper published in The Journal of Modern History, Paxton argued that the best way to recognize emerging fascist movements isn't by their rhetoric, their politics, or their aesthetics. Rather, he said, mature democracies turn fascist by a recognizable process, a set of five stages that may be the most important family resemblance that links all the whole motley collection of 20th Century fascisms together. According to our reading of Paxton's stages, we weren't there yet. There were certain signs -- one in particular -- we were keeping an eye out for, and we just weren't seeing it.

And now we are. In fact, if you know what you're looking for, it's suddenly everywhere. It's odd that I haven't been asked for quite a while; but if you asked me today, I'd tell you that if we're not there right now, we've certainly taken that last turn into the parking lot and are now looking for a space. Either way, our fascist American future now looms very large in the front windshield -- and those of us who value American democracy need to understand how we got here, what's changing now, and what's at stake in the very near future if these people are allowed to win -- or even hold their ground.

More: http://www.alternet.org/politics/141819/is_the_u.s._on_the_brink_of_fascism/

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The third stage: being there

All through the Bush years, progressive right-wing watchers refused to call it "fascism" because, though we kept looking, we never saw clear signs of a deliberate, committed institutional partnership forming between America's conservative elites and its emerging homegrown brownshirt horde. We caught tantalizing signs of brief flirtations -- passing political alliances, money passing hands, far-right moonbat talking points flying out of the mouths of "mainstream" conservative leaders. But it was all circumstantial, and fairly transitory. The two sides kept a discreet distance from each other, at least in public. What went on behind closed doors, we could only guess. They certainly didn't act like a married couple.

Now, the guessing game is over. We know beyond doubt that the Teabag movement was created out of whole cloth by astroturf groups like Dick Armey's FreedomWorks and Tim Phillips' Americans for Prosperity, with massive media help from FOX News. We see the Birther fracas -- the kind of urban myth-making that should have never made it out of the pages of the National Enquirer -- being openly ratified by Congressional Republicans. We've seen Armey's own professionally-produced field manual that carefully instructs conservative goon squads in the fine art of disrupting the democratic governing process -- and the film of public officials being terrorized and threatened to the point where some of them required armed escorts to leave the building. We've seen Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner applauding and promoting a video of the disruptions and looking forward to "a long, hot August for Democrats in Congress."

This is the sign we were waiting for -- the one that tells us that yes, kids: we are there now.

~ Sara Robinson

Important Resource on Health Care Reform + Dennis Prager's 10 Health Care Lies

I am grateful to have just heard today about this new resource - http://pleasecutthecrap.typepad.com/main/ - which exposes misinformation that is sucking some - far too many - Americans into acting against their own best interests. Of course, my motto, always, in seeking facts and to expose the underbelly of those forces which fiercely fight against the enormous shift that is trying to happen in our nation and across the planet is (1) to place principles before personalities, (2) to follow the money, and (3) to join hands to work together to create a world that works for all...

Peace ~ Molly

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Cutting the Crap: Dennis Prager's

10 Health Care Lies -- er, Questions

by Milt Shook

Check out these statistics:

- In 2008, health care spending in the United States reached $2.4 trillion, and was projected to reach $3.1 trillion in 2012.1 Health care spending is projected to reach $4.3 trillion by 2016.
- Health care spending is 4.3 times the amount spent on national defense.
- In 2008, the United States will spend 17 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care. It is projected that the percentage will reach 20 percent by 2017.
- Although nearly 46 million Americans are uninsured, the United States spends more on health care than other industrialized nations, and those countries provide health insurance to all their citizens.
- Health care spending accounted for 10.9 percent of the GDP in Switzerland, 10.7 percent in Germany, 9.7 percent in Canada and 9.5 percent in France, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

From <http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml>

MORE:

http://pleasecutthecrap.typepad.com/main/2009/08/cutting-the-crap-dennis-prager.html#more

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"We are not healthier. That's an outright lie. We are 37th in the world in health care performance, and 72nd in overall health, of the 191 nations surveyed by the World Health Organization. If you don't want to believe the WHO, the Commonwealth Fund ranked the 19 most advanced countries in the world and placed us last. Our infant mortality rate is dead last in the industrialized world. Our life expectancy rate is not longer; we're actually the only industrialized nation in the world in which life expectancy has DROPPED in the last 20 years. There are actually pockets in this country, in inner cities and rural areas, in which life expectancy figures are comparable to those in sub-Saharan Africa." ~ Milt Shook

The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food, Food, Inc. and More...

These are such important issues, which I hope you will consider sharing with others. Peace ~ Molly

Review of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals: http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php
"The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us."

Michael Pollan on Bill Moyers Journal: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11282008/profile.html
"In October 2008, Pollan wrote to the prospective presidents about just how far food policy reaches into our world — from national security to the rise of diabetes. In his "An Open Letter to the Farmer in Chief," Pollan gave the next occupant a 'heads up' about an issue that hadn't made any noise on the very noisy campaign trail:
[Y]ou will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation's food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention...[Y]ou will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change. Unlike food, these are issues you did campaign on — but as you try to address them you will quickly discover that the way we currently grow, process and eat food in America goes to the heart of all three problems and will have to change if we hope to solve them."

NY Times review "Deconstructing Dinner": http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/books/review/23kamp.html
"Nowhere is this anxiety more acute, Pollan says, than in the United States. Wealth, abundance and the lack of a steadying, centuries-old food culture have conspired to make us Americans dysfunctional eaters, obsessed with getting thin while becoming ever more fat, lurching from one specious bit of dietary wisdom (margarine is better for you than butter) to another (carbs kill). Pollan diagnoses a "national eating disorder," and he aims to shed light on both its causes and some potential solutions. To this end, he embarks on four separate eating adventures, each of which starts at the very beginning — in the soil from which the raw materials of his dinners will emerge — and ends with a cooked, finished meal."

Video "Michael Pollan: The Omnivore's Dilemma": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFpjskn3_Pc

Video "FOOD NEWS: Michael Pollan: In Defense Of Food": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWg0cCNAB-M&feature=fvw

Food Inc., the movie (playing in theaters in many places): http://www.foodincmovie.com/

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"Eating well, he (Pollan) finds, can be a pleasurable way to change the world.”
—Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation

As "Time" magazine recently put: farm policy is "a welfare program for the megafarms that use the most fuel, water and pesticides; emit the most greenhouse gases; grow the most fattening crops; hire the most illegals; and depopulate rural America."

~ from Bill Moyers Journal

"We have a serious epidemic of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, diet-related cancers. All these chronic diseases which is now what kills us basically pretty reliably in America are adding more than $250 billion a year to healthcare costs. They are the reason that this generation just being born now is expected to have a shorter lifespan than their parents, that one in three Americans born in the year 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control, will have type 2 diabetes, which is a really serious sentence. It takes several years off your life. It gives you an 80 percent chance of heart disease. It means you are going to be spending $14,000 a year in added health costs. So this is about how we're eating."

~ Michael Pollan