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CorrenteCeci n'est pas une caption.
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Per capita health care spending (2007):
United States: $7290
Switzerland: $4417
France: $3601
United Kingdom: $2992
Average of OECD developed nations: $2964
Italy: $2686
Japan: $2581
-- Bob Somerby
The text of HR676 (Medicare For All) as PDF (30 pages). The FAQ. Compare HR3200 with HR676.
Medicare for All would save $350 billion a year (study in New England Journal of Medicine).
In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, "I am a proponent of a single-payer universal healthcare program*." -- Bill Moyers.
* Medicare For All.
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POTL
, n. People Of The Lie. Coined by Christian psychiatrist and theologian M. Scott Peck in his book The People of the Lie, which is, among other things, an examination of the nature of human evil. Peck quotes Martin Buber:
Since the primary motive of evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church.
Additional excerpts can be found here. "Utterly dedicated to preserving their self-image of perfection, they are unceasingly engaged in the effort to maintain the appearance of moral purity. They are acutely sensitive to social norms and what others might think of them. They seem to live lives that are above reproach. The words "image", "appearance" and "outwardly" are crucial to understanding the morality of 'the evil'. While they lack any motivation to be good, they intensely desire to appear good. Their goodness is all on a level of pretense. It is in effect a lie. Actually the lie is designed not so much to deceive others as to deceive themselves. We lie only when we are attempting to cover up something we know to be illicit. At one and the same time 'the evil' are aware of their evil and desperately trying to avoid the awareness." Peck's material, I feel, has great potential for analyzing and deconstructing the nature and behavior of the wing of the Republican party that has captured our government. With the caveats, that Peck raises, that evil is very dangerous to analyze--since we are, after all, all vulnerable to it.
Comments
What, no Harry Potter books on the Top10?
Maybe the Christianists are slipping!
And from the linked story :
Can't wait!
Wouldn't the Christianists
be awfully bored if they got everything they wanted?
I mean, the Massachusetts Bay Colony wasn't exactly a swinging place.*
*Oops, unless you were accused of being a witch, that is.
Every apathetic citizen is a silent enlistee in the cause of inverted totalitarianism.—Sidney Wolin
Not just books being banned!
My former hometown in Michigan no longer allows Halloween celebrations in schools. They have some sort of "autumn festival" baloney instead. Parents were freaking out over the pagan tendencies their children might develop after wearing a witch, devil or ghost costume. This is a town with only one bookstore and surprise! -- it sells only Christian "books."
Dog is my co-pilot!
Has anyone tried to explain to them that Halloween
is a Christian holiday anyway?
Nothing is true; everything is permitted.
No true Christian
believes that Halloween is a Christian holiday.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
No way! These are Fox-TV christians ...
they have no tolerance for new or different ideas or people who aren't exactly like them. They're terrified by anyone from a foreign country. Even food has to be "American." Forget sushi or hummus or tapas. Breadsticks are considered exotic!
Dog is my co-pilot!
But it's not 'new' at all!
All Hallows Eve has been recognized as the night before All Saints' Day since the Catholic Church co-opted it at the dawn of the Middle Ages.
These modern types, no comprehension of tradition...
Nothing is true; everything is permitted.
point of inquiry
I'm not really conversant with the different Christianist
sects. But are the anti-Halloweeners also anti-Catholic Christianists? Actually, to make that "points" of inquiry plural, are Catholics considered Christianists?
I worked with a woman at one point, also from the upper Midwest, who explained to me that her whole church pretty much considered Catholics just one step removed from Satan-worshippers (she was Lutheran, I think), so I'm wondering if the fact that it was the Catholic church that coopted All Hallows Eve would make Christianists even more hostile to Halloween.
I grew up in a vaguely Catholic area and am a lapsed vaguely-Catholic person myself. Until that conversation, I had no understanding whatsoever of how much hate festered among some non-Catholic Christians toward Catholics. I mean, yes, I knew being Catholic almost cost JFK the election, but I never really understood why.
Reasonable men adapt themselves to their environment; unreasonable men try to adapt their environment to themselves. Thus all progress is the result of the efforts of unreasonable men. -- George Bernard Shaw
Anti-Catholics, yup, that could be ...
when I was a kid, parents (Protestants) talked about how all the Catholics lived on the other side of town. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement that that was better than having them live next door. But it was very passive-aggressive --no one ever talked trash about Catholics, but clearly they preferred to avoid them.
The people who are there now are a little different. They pretty much hate everything and they don't keep it a secret. They're evangelicals and town hall types. Anyone with an education is suspect. The internet is a scary place. Some of the women don't handle money -- their husbands do it for them(!). They will tell you with a straight face that evolution is a myth and global warming doesn't exist because only god can destroy the earth. Seriously.
Of course, they all voted Republican for years, so none of them have jobs, most of their pension funds have disappeared and all the industry is gone. The only things left are the fast food places, a few bars and the schools that are too poor to buy textbooks. But, yeah, you wouldn't want your kid to dress up like a witch on Halloween and piss off god.
Dog is my co-pilot!
They banned Christmas once, y'know
Just sayin'.
...for the rest of us