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

* * *

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/

* * *

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

* * *

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

* * *

"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/

* * *

"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

Important Resources to Counter Ignorance and Polarization

Here is a very partial list of resources some of you may find helpful and may want to pass on to others. Peace ~ Molly

AlterNet: http://www.alternet.org/

Media Matters: http://mediamatters.org/

Center For American Progress: http://www.americanprogress.org/

Think Progress: http://thinkprogress.org/

Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/

Truthout: http://www.truthout.org/

The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

firedoglake: http://firedoglake.com/

Brad Blog: http://www.bradblog.com/

* * *

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

~ Thomas Jefferson

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

~ Robert M. Hutchins

There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to overcome the problems we face, just the familiar ones: honest search for understanding, education, organization, action that raises the cost of state violence for its perpetrators or that lays the basis for institutional change -- and the kind of commitment that will persist despite the temptations of disillusionment, despite many failures and only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter future."

~ Noam Chomsky

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS.

~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

This is BIG: Jeremy Scahill's Latest On Blackwater

Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/scahill

By Jeremy Scahill
August 4, 2009

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting "illegal" or "unlawful" weapons into the country on Prince's private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.

More: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/scahill

* * *

Blackwater's Dark Deeds Exposed
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/blackwatercountdown_video

* * *

Jeremy Scahill
Jeremy Scahill, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. He is an award-winning investigative journalist and correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!.
More: http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/jeremy_scahill

* * *

"Blackwater is a law unto itself, both internationally and domestically. The question is why they operated with impunity. In addition to Blackwater, we should be questioning their patrons in the previous administration who funded and employed this organization. Blackwater wouldn't exist without federal patronage; these allegations should be thoroughly investigated."

~ Congressman Dennis Kucinich

Declaration of Interdependence

Five members of the David Suzuki Foundation team wrote the following Declaration of Interdependence in 1992 for the United Nations' Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

In 2001, Finnish composer Pehr Henrik Nordgren wrote his Symphony no. 6 "Interdependence" based on the declaration, which also served as lyrics to the piece. It was performed for the first time in Sendai, Japan in December, 2001.

* * *

This We Know

We are the earth, through the plants and animals that nourish us.
We are the rains and the oceans that flow through our veins.
We are the breath of the forests of the land, and the plants of the sea.
We are human animals, related to all other life as descendants of the firstborn cell.
We share with these kin a common history, written in our genes.
We share a common present, filled with uncertainty.
And we share a common future, as yet untold.
We humans are but one of thirty million species weaving the thin layer of life enveloping the world.
The stability of communities of living things depends upon this diversity.
Linked in that web, we are interconnected -- using, cleansing, sharing and replenishing the fundamental elements of life.
Our home, planet Earth, is finite; all life shares its resources and the energy from the sun, and therefore has limits to growth.
For the first time, we have touched those limits.
When we compromise the air, the water, the soil and the variety of life, we steal from the endless future to serve the fleeting present.

This We Believe

Humans have become so numerous and our tools so powerful that we have driven fellow creatures to extinction, dammed the great rivers, torn down ancient forests, poisoned the earth, rain and wind, and ripped holes in the sky.
Our science has brought pain as well as joy; our comfort is paid for by the suffering of millions.
We are learning from our mistakes, we are mourning our vanished kin, and we now build a new politics of hope.
We respect and uphold the absolute need for clean air, water and soil.
We see that economic activities that benefit the few while shrinking the inheritance of many are wrong.
And since environmental degradation erodes biological capital forever, full ecological and social cost must enter all equations of development.
We are one brief generation in the long march of time; the future is not ours to erase.
So where knowledge is limited, we will remember all those who will walk after us, and err on the side of caution.

This We Resolve

All this that we know and believe must now become the foundation of the way we live.
At this turning point in our relationship with Earth, we work for an evolution: from dominance to partnership; from fragmentation to connection; from insecurity, to interdependence.

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/About_us/Declaration_of_Interdependence.asp

* * *

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly,

our whole life would change.

~ Buddha

AGENDA FOR A NEW ECONOMY: FROM PHANTOM WEALTH TO REAL WEALTH

Warmest Greetings

David Korten is one of my heroes (see photo with David on my blog), and I am very excited about his latest book Agenda For New Economy. The below is taken from his website at http://www.davidkorten.org/NewEconomyBook.

Peace ~ Molly

* * *

A Declaration of Independence from Wall Street

Offers bold economic reforms that attack the underlying cause of the

current economic collapse, not just it’s symptoms.
A radical but achievable program that restores and builds on the

fundamental strengths of the American economy.

Today’s economic crisis is the worst since the Great Depression. However, as David Korten shows, the steps being taken to address it – including pouring trillions of dollars into bailouts for the Wall Street institutions that created the mess – do nothing to deal with the reality of a failed economic system. It’s like treating cancer with band aids. And the financial collapse now in the public spotlight is only the tip of the iceberg. The system’s social and environmental failures may ultimately be even more destructive.

Korten identifies the deeper sources of the failure: Wall Street institutions that have perfected the art of creating phantom “wealth” without producing anything of real value. Its major players engage in speculative trading, buy into asset bubbles, create debt pyramids, and engage in predatory lending practices. Their seeming success created an economic mirage that led us to believe the economy was expanding exponentially, even as our economic, social, and natural capital eroded and most people struggled ever harder to make ends meet.

Our hope lies not with Wall Street, Korten argues, but with Main Street, which creates real wealth from real resources to meet real needs. He outlines an agenda to liberate the latent entrepreneurial energies of Main Street from Wall Street’s deadly grip and bring into being a new economy—locally based, community-oriented, and devoted to creating a better life for all, not simply increasing profits. It will require courageous and imaginative changes to how we measure economic success, organize our financial system, even the very way we create money. Korten outlines a challenging, but practical agenda summarized at the end of the book in his version of the economic address to the nation he wishes Barack Obama were able to deliver.

Korten’s intention is not to offer final answers, but rather to provoke discussion of options that powerful interests prefer not be mentioned. These interests devised the system that has brought us to the brink of ruin. It’s time to turn away from the Wall Street system of phantom wealth and return to an economy firmly rooted in the long-term health of people and the planet.

More: http://www.davidkorten.org/NewEconomyBook.

* * *

Call those of us on the side of Earth Community progressives - progressive conservatives and progressive liberals. Although we have our differences, we share a commitment to creating a society governed by ordinary people and dedicated to the ideals of liberty, justice, and opportunity for all. We are driver by principle rather than ideology, and we deal in reality rather than delusion. We have no more in common with the ideologies of the Far Left who seek violent revolution and state control of every aspect of life than we do with the ideological extremists of the Far Right who pursue imperial wars abroad, a theocratic state at home, and freedom for themselves to oppress the rest.

~ David Korten

HAARM: Healthy Americans Against Reforming Medicine

HAARM does a great job illuminating how it is that we Americans get

pursuaded to act against our own and others' best interests regarding

health care reform. Important to share! Peace ~ Molly

* * *

Watch this!: HAARM.org - Message Strategy Session

Who's behind the anti-health care reform rhetoric?

YouTube - HAARM.org - Fire Care
What if we ran the fire department like we run the health care system?
At HAARM, they do.

HAARM Website:

http://haarm.org/

On their website, there is a "SALUTE TO HAARM-FUL HEROES". Examples quoted below are:

Rick Scott gave up a lucrative career as a health industry CEO after being forced to resign amidst the largest Medicare fraud settlement in history.* He went on to found Conservatives for Patients' Rights, a swiftboat-style campaign to kill Obamacare. He was even a featured speaker at his local Tea Party protest! Rick is one of our favorites.

Zach Wamp wears many different hats. He was elected to Congress by the people of Tennessee, but he spends most of his time running for governor and saying crazy things being awesome. He, like us, firmly believes health care is a privilege, not a right.

Glenn Beck is ushering in a new era of fear mongering and histrionics every weeknight on his self-titled Fox News show. We basically wrote our health care platform by copy-and-pasting from transcripts of his show. Glenn’s hobbies include hunting for socialists, building giant props for his show, and crying.

Most people know Rush Limbaugh as one of the country’s foremost experts on prescription drugs. But Rush is playing a much bigger role in the health care debate than that. Every day he educates his 20 million listeners on the finer points of Obamacare, like the little known tidbit that once this plan passes the government will be able to tell you not only what kind of car to drive but what kind of TV to purchase. Rush will never let the facts get in the way of scaring the bejeezus out of his listeners.

* * *

It's time for greatness - not for greed. It's a time for idealism - not ideology. It is a time not just for compassionate words, but compassionate action.

~ Marian Wright Edelman

America's health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.
~ Walter Cronkite

CIGNA Whistleblower Wendell Potter Illuminates the Truth about Health Care in America

Bill Moyers Journal last night was especially informative and powerful.

From the Journal's website http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/profile.html:

Wendell Potter on Profits Before Patients

July 31, 2009

Last month, testimony in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation by a former health insurance insider named Wendell Potter made news even before it occurred: CBS NEWS headlined: "Cigna Whistleblower to Testify." After Potter's testimony the industry scrambled to do damage control: "Insurers defend rescissions, take heat for lack of transparency."

In his first extended television interview since leaving the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter tells Bill Moyers why he left his successful career as the head of Public Relations for CIGNA, one of the nation's largest insurers, and decided to speak out against the industry. "I didn't intend to [speak out], until it became really clear to me that the industry is resorting to the same tactics they've used over the years, and particularly back in the early '90s, when they were leading the effort to kill the Clinton plan."

Potter began his trip from health care spokesperson to reform advocate while back home in Tennessee. Potter attended a "health care expedition," a makeshift health clinic set up at a fairgrounds, and he tells Bill Moyers, "It was absolutely stunning. When I walked through the fairground gates, I saw hundreds of people lined up, in the rain. It was raining that day. Lined up, waiting to get care, in animal stalls. Animal stalls."

Looking back over his long career, Potter sees an industry corrupted by Wall Street expectations and greed. According to Potter, insurers have every incentive to deny coverage — every dollar they don't pay out to a claim is a dollar they can add to their profits, and Wall Street investors demand they pay out less every year. Under these conditions, Potter says, "You don't think about individual people. You think about the numbers, and whether or not you're going to meet Wall Street's expectations."

You can view Wendel Potter's congressional testimony online or read the text.

You can learn more about Remote Area Medical, the organization that put on the "health care expedition" here.

Strategy Memos
During the interview, Bill Moyers read from confidential documents drafted by America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) in May and June of 2007. The documents outline a unified strategy for AHIP members to prepare for the release of Michael Moore's documentary, SICKO on June 29, 2007. You can download and read the full AHIP documents by clicking here and here (PDFs).

The Language of Health Care 2009 (PDF) The Frank Luntz memo strategizing opposition to health care reform Bill Moyers mentions in the interview.

GOP Health Care Strategy (PDF) Strategy memo by Alex Castellanos dated July 7, 2009.

Watch the video: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/watch.html

Read the transcript: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/transcript1.html

* * *

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times

of moral crisis, maintain a neutrality."

~Wendell Potter quoting President John F. Kennedy