Politics Plus

Tom Coburn is at it again.

Speaking to reporters last night, the Senate’s top obstructionist, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), said that he would attempt to slow down progress on health care reform by insisting that the 1,000-page-plus health care reform bill be read aloud on the Senate floor. “The American people are going to get to hear this bill read, period,” said Coburn, adding that “he would also block other legislative shortcuts” in an effort to delay the bill, such as requiring “the Senate to use up the entire 30-hour debate period called for after a filibuster has been broken.” According to Roll Call, “earlier this month, Republican leadership aides said Coburn was unlikely to make such a move without the blessing of GOP leaders.”

Inserted from <Think Progress>

This is just a GOP delay while thousands of Americans keep dying from the lack of health care.  Perhaps this GOP scum should remember the Hippocratic oath he took when he graduated from medical school.

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.

I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

Inserted from <PBS>

The top graphic is a Hippocrates.  The bottom is a hypocrite.  There is no resemblance between Coburn’s oath and his behavior trying to prevent the neediest Americans from having access to health care.  One of the biggest opponents of health care reform is Supply Side Jesus, not the real Jesus who practiced love, tolerance and care for those in need, but the Republican/Religious Right Jesus who practices hate, fear, and greed.  In the opposition to health care reform many roads meet at C Street.  There’s some good news there.

Residents of the C Street Christian fellowship house will no longer benefit from a loophole that had allowed the house’s owners to avoid paying property taxes.

Previously, the house — despite being home to numerous lawmakers — had been tax exempt, because it was classified as a church. That arrangement had allowed the building’s owner, the secretive international Christian organization The Family, to charge significantly below market rents to its residents. In recent year, Senators John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Reps. Zach Wamp (R-TN), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) have all reportedly called C Street home.

Natalie Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Office of Tax and Revenue for Washington D.C., told TPMmuckraker that her office inspected the house this summer. "It was determined that portions of it were being rented out for private residential purposes," she said. As a result, the tax exempt status was partially revoked. Sixty-six percent of the value of the property is now subject to taxation…

Inserted from <TPM>

If they are a church, as they claim, all their political activity has been a violation of the separation clause, so they should lose all tax exemption and have to pay back taxes, with interest and penalties for all the years they have been proselytizing politicians.

Rachel Maddow did a beautiful job of tying it all together.

The CBO is about to release its estimate of the latest Senate bill.  As soon as you get that news, camp on your phones please.  We need to get this passed.

Here’s a real beauty from the outer reaches of wing-nuttery also known as the mainstream GOP.  Watch out folks!!

The religious right has long railed against Halloween, condemning its pagan roots and claiming it promotes witchcraft and the occult. This year some groups are embracing the day as a time to reach kids with a pro-life and Christian message, while others use the day to burn “wicked” books and CDs. And one writer for Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network warns parents that witches curse Halloween candy.

“[M]ost of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches,” wrote CBN’s Kimberly Daniels. “I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference.”

Daniels continued, “Halloween is much more than a holiday filled with fun and tricks or treats. It is a time for the gathering of evil that masquerades behind the fictitious characters of Dracula, werewolves, mummies and witches on brooms. The truth is that these demons that have been presented as scary cartoons actually exist. I have prayed for witches who are addicted to drinking blood and howling at the moon.”… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Minnesota Independent>

It did not take long before several progressive web sites picked up on this and started pouring on the ridicule.  The article quickly disappeared from the CBN web site, but if you have trouble believing this, the following article contains a link to a Google cache of the original page.

An article on CBN.com that alleges, among other things, that “most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches” has been removed by the site after becoming an object of mockery by The Huffington Post. (We linked a cached version.) The site ran a slideshow and poll of the most evil candy brands.

Why did CBN remove the post, which originally appeared at Charisma.com? Is HuffPo guilty of mocking Christianity, or are they justly targeting a fringe belief?

We’ve reached out to CBN to find out why they took the post down, and we await their response. There are several possibilities. It’s possible that CBN’s editors re-thought the content of the article, given the negative attention being paid to it. The piece also suggests the existence of an unholy trinity, and a laundry list of “behind-the-scenes” Halloween activities that includes:

* Sex with demons

* Orgies between animals and humans

* Animal and human sacrifices

* Sacrificing babies to shed innocent blood

* Rape and molestation of adults, children and babies

* Revel nights

* Conjuring of demons and casting of spells

* Release of “time-released” curses against the innocent and the ignorant…

Inserted from <Mediaite>

Teabaggers!  Witches have been praying over your GOP Kool-Aid!  They have cursed it with evil spells!  If you drink again, you may become rational, kind, and sane!

Seriously, what’s really frightening here is that people who actually believe this garbage are sitting in Congress trying to influence health care reform, climate change reform, EDUCATION, and other serious issues.

I must add one more thing.  My perspective is that of a Christian, not like these, but an authentic one that has rejected the dogma of the religious right, who have hijacked Christianity and replaced the real Jesus with the Republican Supply-side Jesus with his gospel of war, fear, and intolerance.  In my time, I’ve had the pleasure to know several Wiccans.  In my experience, their behavior has been far more Christian than anything I see coming from the religious right.  Therefore, to all Wiccans, in the spirit of Christian peace, love and brotherhood, Happy Samhain. 

J Street Project could evolve into a replacement for AIPAC.

This year has seen a dramatic shift in American Jews’ attitudes toward Israel. In January many liberal Jews were shocked by the Gaza war, in which Israel used overwhelming force against a mostly defenseless civilian population unable to flee. Then came the rise to power of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, whose explicitly anti-Arab platform was at odds with an American Jewish electorate that had just voted 4 to 1 for a minority president. Throw in angry Israelis writing about the "rot in the Diaspora," and it’s little wonder young American Jews feel increasingly indifferent about a country that has been at the center of Jewish identity for four decades.

These stirrings on the American Jewish street will come to a head in late October in Washington with the first national conference of J Street, the reformation Israel lobby. J Street has been around less than two years, but it is summoning liberal–and some not so liberal–Jews from all over the country to "rock the status quo," code for AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee).

Sure sounds like a velvet revolution in the Jewish community, huh? Not so fast. The changes in attitudes are taking place at the grassroots; by and large, Jewish leaders are standing fast. And as for policymakers, the opening has been slight. There seems little likelihood the conference will bring us any closer to that holy grail of the reformers: the ability of a US president, not to mention Congress, to put real pressure on Israel.

First the good news. There’s no question the Gaza conflict has helped break down the traditional Jewish resistance to criticizing Israel. Gaza was "the worst public relations disaster in Israel’s history," says M.J. Rosenberg, a longtime Washington analyst who reports for Media Matters Action Network. For the first time in a generation, leading American Jews broke with the Jewish state over its conduct. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen said he was "shamed" by Israel’s actions, while Michelle Goldberg wrote in the Guardian that Israel’s killing of hundreds of civilians as reprisal for rocket attacks was "brutal" and probably "futile."

Even devoted friends of Israel Leon Wieseltier and Michael Walzer expressed misgivings about the disproportionate use of force, and if Reform Jewish leaders could not bring themselves to criticize the war, the US left was energized by the horror. Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of Code Pink, threw herself into the cause of Gazan freedom after years of ignoring Israel-Palestine, in part out of deference to her family’s feelings. In The Nation Naomi Klein came out for boycott, divestment and sanctions; later, visiting Ramallah, she apologized to the Palestinians for her "cowardice" in not coming to that position earlier… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <The Nation>

Change will not come overnight, but I’m thoroughly gratified to see a more appropriate and more representative group for Jewish Americans than AIPAC.  Under the guise of representing American Jews, AIPAC is far more representative of American neocons, like Dead-eye Dick Cheney, and theocons like Paul Hagee.  The most beneficial development I can see for Israel is peace in the middle east.  The policies of the current government of Israel, supported by AIPAC, virtually assure the continuation of the conflict.

It just goes on and on.  Recently Congressional Republicans have signed onto a conspiracy theory that Muslims are trying to take over Congress by becoming Interns.  Rachael Maddow had the story:

Here’s more information about the creator of this hogwash, David Gaubatz.

Let’s take a closer look at the co-author of Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America, just out from WND Books, and now at #16 among all books on Amazon.

That would be David Gaubatz, a former Air Force investigator and Arabic speaker, who dispatched his son Chris to grow a beard and go undercover as a Muslim to obtain an internship at the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Gaubatz, who has long warned about the threat of Islamism in the United States, has claimed that he found Saddam’s long-lost WMDs while in Iraq and has labeled Obama "Muslim" and a "self-admitted ‘crack head.’"

The documents Chris took from CAIR are the basis for the new book, which has been seized on by four House Republicans to call for a probe into whether the group planted Muslim "intern spies" on key national security committees.

Keep in mind that Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) actually wrote the foreward for the book, warning that "We Americans must wake up before it is too late!"

Here’s the lowdown on Gaubatz:

• He referred to "our Muslim leader" Barack Obama on his blog last year.
• He has claimed that he personally found sites with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction when he was an agent with the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations in 2003. But the Syrians beat us to the punch on excavating the sites, Gaubatz claims, and the U.S. government suppressed the information to avoid the "explosive revelation of their own lethal incompetence."
• Just yesterday he wondered about Congress’ two Muslim representatives, "How much information do we have on Carson and Congressman Keith Ellison?"
• According to Glenn Greenwald, Gaubatz in 2007 was focusing his time on creating "a comprehensive map of every mosque and Islamic school in the U.S" in order to determine which ones were preaching "Islamic law." The Web site that explained that project has since been made private.
• He said in September 2008 on a now scrubbed blog post at www.jihadishere.blogspot.com that: "We are now on the verge of allowing a self admitted ‘crack-head’ to have his finger on every nuclear weapon in America."
• He apparently has a history of faking conversions to Islam as part of his investigations.

Media Matters has a comprehensive roundup here and Greenwald has more here… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <TPM>

Please don’t think I’m equating ALL Republicans to David Gaubatz.  This guy is lunatic fringe for sure.  Nobody in their right mind would take him seriously.  But I have to ask the question.  Why did a Republican Congresswoman, Sue Myrick, write the forward to his book?  Why are Republicans in Congress presenting his views on the floor of Congress.  GOP hate speech is going to cause more deaths.  Why haven’t GOP leaders come out and condemned this?  I can only come to one conclusion.  The leadership of the GOP, not Republican people, do not care how many die.  They care only about grabbing power, no mater what they have to do, who they have to harm, or who gets killed in the process.  Until that changes, every Republican in office is one Republican too many!