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Special Award

An Open Letter to Frank Schaeffer

Franky, you started out great, you lost me somewhere when you started ranting the generalities towards the “end” of your article. I came at this the other way. I had a couple of door to door ladies come to me and start asking me if I read Revelations. I was brought up Catholic (mostly calisthenics and catechisms). Lets say I was pretty rude, all my Christian friends were always throwing around this “book”. They said they would be back to “discuss it ” if I could read it.. My friend had a New Testament pocketbook. I tried reading Revelations ,it made no sense. Thanks Franky, I never knew it was written four hundred freaking YEARS after Jesus walked.

I went to the gospels and began reading just to give it a shot. After reading a few chapters I was telling myself “Well I won’t do that again” or “I am going to try and look at things the way Jesus did”, and…. very slowly, whoa! It came over me like six billion pure clean drug free acid trips, what and where Buddha’s enlightenment was directed.. Yipes all of it. I could go on for hours, and just fail in the superlatives.

Innyhoo..

That was years ago. I have had “tribulations” and “trials”. Brother don’t forget that Jesus was always correcting even his closest followers, hell one of them even sold him out to the “man”. Pauly (Saul) was body slammed off his donkey while he was tracking down “followers of the way” to kill, maim or imprison them. That whole New Testament reads like a book and plot like no other, humility, humor, Jesus renamed many of these Jewish kids, to fit their weird personalities, he renamed and left in charge the tough old fisherman who denied him… “Thrice” mind you, Pete was later reprimanded by Paul who used to be Saul (for dissing the Goyem) who wanted to join ” the way “.

I could go on “forever” (insider Christian joke) but here is my point. Frank you have, and the atheo-wanna be-intellectuals are taking a lazy sweeping view of Believers. As a prank a right wing non evangelical drew me into a conversation with two (what you call evangelicals) distinct individuals. They were spewing venom and horrified anger at the mere speaking of Hillary Clinton’s name as if she was satan’s spawn.

I just asked them to “look into their hearts”, for those of you ahteo-gnorant, an evangelical code phrase… I mentioned that Ms. Clinton has dedicated years of her life for public health, raised a fine daughter made it through an horrifying public spectacle in her marriage and kept her family in tact . I went on further to state that my right wingy “Christian brothers” should be holding her in high esteem. Jaws agape (the secular agape) evangelo one, began back tracking and sputtering and stammering immediately, that “sure… Ah er I have nothing against Hillary “as a person” (evangelo cop out term ). The other didn’t talk to me for a year because I “questioned his Christianity”.

My point! Find that cinched up hate feeling (usually in your chest where your souls is.. *wink*) whether you are an agno, a Bible thumper, I have a friend who is a wound up pissed off Buddhist, so no special ticket there, Darwinist (Jeez try and ask these college kids where the monkeyman is) they have the “shaddup asshole” clause if you look for any (many ) holes in their doctrine, no matter what your belief net. Expunge hate from your make up, Primal scream, therapy (Frank you need to stop hating your daddy) for the love of God (secular exclamation) its YOU, er… all of us.

And.. learn those code words kids! I had an ahteo-pseudo intellectual friend stunned when I explained that during an interview about his fourteen (?) homes, Johnny McCain slipped in that he was “blessed” with many things in his life.. and that this code drop just cleared him with thousands upon thousands of evangelo-prosperity Christians.

Fear more the right wing manipulators Coors, Scaife, the Bush handlers, Ralph Reed the squeaky little guy who embezzled millions from the native American tribe. Dudes they know the hate code, and they know the code words. Read the book by the young guy who got worked by the Bush Handlers, and called them out on it…

Do a little more in depth analysis… really use your intellect and find out that this is a minority amongst many diverse groups herded by a bunch of slick manipulators.  

Jesus loves you man… And therefore I do.

Franks article:

Ever wonder why the Republican Party’s foreign “policy” got so off the wall and bellicose? Want to know why we’re in two wars? Want to know why so many evangelicals hate Obama for saying he’ll negotiate with Muslims? Want to know why President Obama should not try to work with Republicans?

All you need to know is that the Republican/Sara/Palin base of evangelical support is rooting for war, death and killing as a longed for — even prayed for — conclusion to human existence. No kidding! Understand what I’m going to tell you here, and you’ll understand what went so wrong with America with W. Bush and why we are the most dangerous country on earth. Shorthand: we have nukes and risk being run by kooks. And, until the election of 2008, an evangelical born-again kook was running our country.

Disclosure: I’m the son of one of the evangelical’s foremost thinkers, the late Francis Schaeffer. And until I left the fold in the mid 1980s I was intimately involved with the Religious Right and have been (until quite recently) a life-long Republican. I knew Jerry Jenkins’ and Tim LaHaye personally and both are followers of my father.

The wild financial success of Jerry Jenkins’ and Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series of sixteen novels is about belonging to the winning side. The books have made hundreds of millions of dollars while spawning an “End Times” industry, inclusive of Left Behind wall paper, screen savers, children’s books and video games. The evangelicals — and hence, from the early 1980s until the election of President Obama in 2008, the Religious Right as it informed US policy through the then dominant Republican Party — are in the grip of an apocalyptic “Rapture” cult centered on revenge and vindication.

This End Times cult is built on a literalistic interpretation of the book of Revelation. The book was the last to be included in the canon of the New Testament. It was only recognized gradually as canonical late in the process — after the year 400 AD — of collecting the gospels and various letters included into the New Testament. The historic Church remained so suspicious of the book Revelation that to this day in the Orthodox Church it has never been included as part of the cyclical public readings of scripture. In other words the book of the Bible that the historic Church found (and finds) most problematic and dangerous is the one that American evangelicals have latched on to like flies on spilled jam.

According to Jenkins and LaHaye the “chosen” (in other words born-again evangelicals) will be airlifted to safety in the “Rapture” when the “End” comes. At last evangelical Americans will know “we” were right about everything and “they” were wrong. We’ll know that because Spaceship Jesus will come back and take us away leaving everyone else to ponder just how very lost they are because they failed to say the words: “I accept Jesus as my personal savior.”

Evangelicals not only wish to be proved right they also want revenge on all other religions and peoples. Not unlike Islamic terrorists who behead their enemies, the evangelicals relish the prospect of God doing the messy killing for them as they watch from on high. It isn’t enough for them to cast the individual “apostate” out of their midst, or to denounce the Roman Catholics as the “whore of Babylon,” they want revenge on all people not like them. The Left Behind novels provides access to vicarious revenge . No need to wait for the End Times, you can get your violent jollies now!

Jenkins and LaHaye describe various deadly scenarios proceeding and following believers being “snatched away” to safety leaving the infidels to their punishment. The authors cash in on years of evangelical paranoia and imagined victimhood. (A strange belief imbued with losers’ self pity by people who have run Congress and the White House until this election!)

Jenkins and LaHaye provide an entertaining book version of a cosmic I-told-you-so from the backward earthly losers (as evangelicals perceive themselves in this the age of science and secularism) to the earthly winners (as evangelicals think of all those clever big city, over-educated progressive secular “elites”). Glory be! As God kills them, including those “secular Jews” running the New York Times who will have to admit we were right all along just before Jesus blasts them!

The promotional copy for one of the books — Shadowed — promises plenty of we-told-you-so entertainment; “After God intervenes with a miracle of global proportions, the tide is turned on international atheism!”

God Is Great! Kill them God! Kill those “international atheists!” They made fun of us because we refused to believe in evolution and built a creationist theme park! They laughed at us for opening our Friday night football games with prayer! They even laughed at Billy Graham, our one and only saint, when his son Franklin raised 28 million dollars to build the Graham theme park! Strike them Lord!

Jenkins and LaHaye are End Times revenge pornographers. Reading about violence against unbelievers is the evangelical Viagra. Take this passage from Glorious Appearing in which Jesus slaughters unbelievers;

The riders not thrown leaped from their horses and tried to control them with the reins, but even as they struggled, their own flesh dissolved, their eyes melted, and their tongues disintegrated… the soldiers stood briefly as skeletons in now-baggy uniforms, then dropped in heaps of bones as the blinded horses continued to fume and rant and rave. Seconds later the same plague afflicted the horses, their flesh and eyes and tongues melting away, leaving grotesque skeletons standing, before they too rattled to the pavement.

Evangelicals can’t get enough of this trash. The video game Left Behind: Eternal Forces was developed by a publicly traded company, Left Behind Games. The player controls a “Tribulation Forces” team and allows the player to “use the power of prayer to strengthen your troops in combat and wield modern military weaponry throughout the game world.” The game blesses and encourages religious violence.

Guided by a literal reading of the prophetic sections of the Bible the expanding Left Behind entertainment empire also feeds the delusions of Christian Zionists who are convinced that the world is heading to a final Battle of Armageddon. Christian Zionists led by the likes of John McCain’s Jabba the Hutt lookalike and big fan — the Reverend John Hagee — believe that war in the Middle East is God’s will. Hagee predicts in his book, Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World, that Russia and the Arabs will invade Israel and then will be destroyed by God. This will cause the Antichrist — the head of the European Union — to stir up a confrontation over Israel between China and the West. Armageddon will ensue and the Second Coming of Christ.

This would all be a joke except for the fact that sixty million Americans identify themselves as evangelicals. That’s a lot of crazy voters — as McCain proved he recognized when he nominated the religious Right’s pet evangelical goof Sara Palin to be his running mate to re-energize the army of goofs who gave us the 8 years of W that brought us to war and economic ruin.

Note to Jews: the evangelicals say they are the State of Israel’s friend, love Jews etc., etc. Wake up! In the evangelical “game” Jews are just apocalyptic Jesus fodder! With friends like these you don’t need enemies. Friends of Israel — and I am one — don’t see Israel as nothing more than a pawn in the End Times. Dig under the surface and you’ll find Hagee, Jenkins, LaHaye are profoundly and fatally anti-Semitic. Follow their uncompromising “Rapture logic” and Israel will be destroyed. These people will always push the US government to take the hardest line against the Arabs. That is no long term favor to Israel. Eternal war is no answer. Check out the area’s demographics. Make peace while there is time!

Christian Zionists support all violent actions by Israel for any reason because in the fevered evangelical mind the nation of Israel is presently standing in for Jesus-the-avenger-on-evildoers everywhere, i.e. Arabs, all of whom (according to the born-again porn peddlers) are soon destined to burn anyway! So, who cares if 10 Israeli deaths from Hamas’ rockets fired into southern Israel are avenged by the killing of 1,300 men women and children in Gaza?USA! USA! Go Jesus! Time for another godly session on my Left Behind: Eternal Forces video game! Hurry Jesus come back and kill em’ all.

And that is the Republican’s base. Good luck to President Obama trying to find bipartisan solutions to our world wide problems with these folks.

Frank Schaeffer is author of 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 Now in paperback.

Tags: evangelicals, Frank Shaeffer, Republicans

Recent Obama speach on Economy

“In the last few days, we’ve seen proposals arise from some in Congress
that you may not have read but you’d be very familiar with because
you’ve been hearing them for the last 10 years, maybe longer. They’re
rooted in the idea that tax cuts alone can solve all our problems; that
government doesn’t have a role to play; that half-measures and
tinkering are somehow enough; that we can afford to ignore our most
fundamental economic challenges — the crushing cost of health care,
the inadequate state of so many of our schools, our dangerous
dependence on foreign oil.

So let me be clear: Those ideas have been tested, and they have
failed. They’ve taken us from surpluses to an annual deficit of over a
trillion dollars, and they’ve brought our economy to a halt. And that’s
precisely what the election we just had was all about. The American
people have rendered their judgment. And now is the time to move
forward, not back. Now is the time for action.”

President Obama

Accuracy.

Tags: Obama, economy, republicans

Feelin’ All Right, Not Feelin’ to Good Myself.. Dave Mason

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
- Krishnamurti

Tags: society, Health

Are We Over Reagan Yet?

But 2008, we saw the price of a median single family home drop 15 percent. Never before have we seen that on record. Industrial production, which is the measure of how much we actually make in this country, has never been lower than it is right now.

Personal income, adjusted for inflation, was higher then than it is today. Personal savings — right after Reagan got elected, people were socking away 12 percent of what they made, today, virtually nothing, which means we don’t have anything to get us through a recession.

But put all of the economic talk aside for a second. Ultimately — we have talked about this many times — this is an economy that is based on people’s willingness to spend money, more than any other economy in the world. People are not willing to spend money.

And just to give you the one indication of this that we always talk about, and it’s consumer confidence. Inconveniently, for Mr. Limbaugh, the standard for consumer confidence was set in 1985. So, 1985, whatever consumer confidence was back then is considered 100. Today, it
is at 38. It is the lowest it has ever been.

Some guy from CNN trying to use reason and facts to argue a point with comedian Rush Limbaugh.

Tags: economy, Reagan, Limbaugh

Reaganomics won US Lost

Alexander Hamilton’s 1791 report to Congress on manufacturers. Hamilton laid out this six-step plan to build an industrial economy in the United States. And, we followed it. Congress actually put it into place in 1792 and it stood until Ronald Reagan came along and started deconstructing this, followed by George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton and George Bush, now, and the legislatures, mostly pushed by the Republicans, taking this thing apart. I mean, you could argue that some it started with Taft-Hartley. But, basically, the Founders laid this thing out; they had it figured out. And, it worked. We built the biggest industrial infrastructure, industrial economy in the world. We have gone—when Reagan came into office we were the largest exporter of manufacturing goods and the largest importer of raw materials on the planet. And, the largest creditor—more people owed us money than anybody else in the world. Now, just 28 years later, we’re the largest importer of finished goods, manufactured goods; the largest exporter of raw materials—which is kind of the definition of a third-world nation—and we’re the most in-debt of any country in the world. This is the absolute consequence of Reaganomics.

Tags: Unions, Reaganomics, economics

New American Hero

This is the guy who paid back his investors and shut down his fund after scoring the biggest gains in history for his investors.

“I was in this game for money,” the 37 year old Lahde wrote. “The
low-hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale
and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who
were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or
supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear
Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government.”

“All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making
it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other sides
of my trades. God Bless America.”

He ended his rant by arguing for the legalization of marijuana. All in all, Andrew Lahde seems a lot more interesting than your typical hedge fund manager.

Tags: AndrewLahde

Peter Schiff who got the Crash “On the money” speaks

In the end, by refusing to allow market forces to work their cure, our economy will inevitably die from the disease. Our economy will now face death by hyperinflation, which will cause a complete loss of confidence in the dollar and result in prices and interest rates skyrocketing out of sight. The evaporation of our national wealth will lead to civil unrest, food and energy shortages, and the possible imposition of martial law. If such a scenario unfolds, what is left of our Constitution will surely be completely shredded.

Although this reality looms as large as anything I have ever seen, investors still do not see the forest for the trees. Convinced that the bailout will actually work, and that foreign governments are derelict for not launching similar plans, global investors are fleeing other currencies in favor of the dollar. Soon investors will discover that foreign politicians and central bankers have acted responsibly. When they do, the current gains seen by the dollar will reverse violently.

Investors seem to be bracing themselves for a global depression that will not occur. Foreign stocks, particularly those exposed to China or natural resources, are trading at the lowest valuations I have seen in my entire career. Fears of a global meltdown are based on the misconception that the U.S. economy is the tent pole for economic activity around the world. The premise of my entire argument is that the U.S. economy, by consuming so much of the world’s resources and manufactured goods, and borrowing so much of the world’s savings, has in fact been a drag on the global economy.

The enormous global vendor financing scheme is finally coming to an end as the vendors discover that their biggest customer is flat broke. In the short run, our creditors are experiencing some pain because they finally realize that they will never get their money back.

Once the foreign stock markets take this hit, they will be far better poised to grow than their American counterpart. Foreigners will reclaim their productivity and savings for themselves, and will subsequently experience the biggest global economic boom in history. America on the other hand will fare much worse, as we will be left with a hollowed out manufacturing base, dilapidated infrastructure, no savings, and a gigantic Federal Government that will regulate, spend, borrow and print our economy into ruin.

For an updated look at my investment strategy, order a copy of my just released book, “The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets.” While the “bull moves” I forecast have yet to materialize, I am confident that given time they will. The good news is that now you actually have some time to put my strategy in place at favorable prices and exchange rates!

— Peter Schiff is the President, Founder and Chief Global Strategist for Euro Pacific Capital. He is widely acknowledged as a expert in international markets, and in global economic strategy. He is a speaker at all the major investment conferences. He is regularly featured on CNBC and Bloomerg TV , and often quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, New York Times, the Financial Times, Investors Business Daily, and many others.

Tags: economiccrash

Dean Baker: Wall Street’s Infinite Sleaze: Goldman and AIG

“Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman Sachs CEO, was in the room with Henry Paulson (former CEO of Goldman) when the decision to save AIG was made. Because Henry Paulson (again..former CEO of Goldman) decided to rescue AIG, Goldman gets paid in full.” AIG owed Goldman $20 billion.

You are in the club or you are not. Billions of bailout bucks for bafoons. The con continues.

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Systemic Vacuous Rancid Banking Trail (follow the stink)

Shining some light on how Wall Street is working to “cure” itself.
Watch Mr. Kravis work the system.

1. Ask for government to back purchase.
“private investment firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and TPG, withdrew at the last minute (on purchasing collapsing AIG) because the government refused to provide a financial guarantee for the purchase.”

From Wall Street Collapse article New York Times

2. Lobby congress to give you special tax rate (um.. where the government guarantee money comes from)
WASHINGTON,
July 10 — Henry R. Kravis, the billionaire founder of the corporate
buyout movement, was working the hallways of Capitol Hill, hoping to
kill legislation that would raise his taxes and those of other
investment fund executives.

Democrats are hoping that billions of additional dollars in tax revenue
from the private equity industry, as well as some players in the hedge
fund arena, could help to finance education tax credits, broader health
programs for lower-income families, and new limits on the growing reach
of the alternative minimum tax.

3. Rely on Bush conservative republican money inbreeding

The industry’s leaders include a variety of seasoned political hands.
The senior chairman and co-founder of the Blackstone Group, for
instance, is Peter G. Peterson, a former White House official and
commerce secretary. Mr. Kravis’s ties to the Bush family go back
decades, to the time when his father was friends with Senator Prescott
Bush, the president’s grandfather. Another major player in the debate,
the Carlyle Group, is based in Washington and led by a group of
well-connected former top government officials.

“It will be a broader fight about the fairness of capital gains having
a lower tax rate. It will be about rewarding risk and recognizing that
when you reward risk you create economic growth.”

4. Form a phony “Council”

The newly founded Private Equity Council, which represents the largest
industry players, has retained a battery of lobbyists from Akin Gump
Strauss Hauer Feld; Capitol Tax Partners; Brownstein Hyatt Farber
Schreck; and Johnson, Madigan, Peck, Boland & Stewart. Kohlberg has
several well-positioned lobbyists, including Kenneth B. Mehlman, a
former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who is a partner at Akin Gump.

Someone watching this ratswirl commented:

“The top 25 individuals in the industry got paid over $10 billion,
taxed at a rate of 15 percent. Those 25 people got paid three times the
amount that was paid to all 80,000 people who teach in the New York
City schools, and they paid roughly one-half to one-third of taxes on a
percentage basis.”

Now, lets keep  Kravis’ and pals lower tax bracket and guarantee their purchase of failed unregulated AIG so we can continue the  “risk” myth.

“It will be about rewarding risk and recognizing that
when you reward risk you create economic growth.”

And we will live happily ever after

Tags: AIG, Kravis, Republican, conservative, collapse