If there is a future wave of wellness...

Israel Philharmonic Orchestra

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Dear Readers,

I want to call your attention to an article that was sent to me by Teresa Wilbur, long time friend of St. John's Center. It is called Music: Essential for Life however the title does not begin to do justice to the power of the piece which is really an address to parents of incoming students at The Boston Conservatory.

I've always known that my years and years of training and professional work as a musician prepared me more than anything else possibly could have for my spiritual vocation. In fact, I have long been aware that the vocation is one. This brief piece by Dr. Karl Paulnack puts words to why that is true more eloquently than I have ever before experienced. And so I'm posting this on all three blogs today.

I will share only three sentences here:

If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do.

Please go read the whole thing. I promise you, you'll be glad you did.

And then listen to some good music today. Something beautiful. Something meaningful to you.

You'll be glad you did that too.
~~~

That "socialist" accusation

Here's a comment to a posting I found over on AMERICAblog:

My Republican brother has worked for the FAA all is life, has the best health care available and the government even sells his house for him when transferred to another area yet he constantly screams about us "socialists". Go figure. Those types not only lack self awareness they have no appreciation for irony and that's why they're so damned stupid. You can't even point out their hypocrisy to them.

I don't think people like that even care about hypocrisy. It's the "I've got mine; screw you," attitude that they seem to think is not only acceptable but laudable.

By the way, isn't it interesting how people from the same family can have such different political philosophies? I also have a brother who's very right-wing in his attitudes. I don't get it.
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"There are no bounds of reason for them."

Please just watch this to the end. Mercy! This is simply beyond absurd but it's happening.

"Are we a country of idiots?"

That's the title of an article I just found. Here's an excerpt:

Idiot: foolish or senseless person. A fitting characterization of those who say that government run programs are an abomination apparently unaware that what they are saying applies to: Medicare, Congressional medical coverage, and Medicaid; Veterans Administration - benefits and hospitals; Social Security and SSI; Public schools and universities; Firefighters, policeman, sheriffs, and forest rangers; FBI and CIA; U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corp., Air Force, and Coast Guard; and The United States Post Office.

Some of these older foolish and senseless people are biting off their own noses to spite their faces by ranting and raving about government control of health care without apparently realizing their Medicare and VA coverage are government run.

So what's the answer to the title question? I fear it is "yes".
~~~

Stop making stuff up, Sarah

Sarah Palin is supposed to be a committed Christian. So how can she live with herself when she tells such bald-faced lies? Here's a little something from CNN:

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told CNN Sunday that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had deliberately made up charges that the Obama administration’s health care bill would lead to euthanasia.

“About euthanasia, they're just totally erroneous. She just made that up,” he said. “Just like the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ that she supposedly didn't support.

“There's nothing like euthanasia in the bill. I practiced medicine for a long time, and of course you have to have end of life discussions — the patients want that. There's nothing… euthanasia's not in this bill.”

And, of course, Palin exploited the fact (again) that she has a disabled child. She claimed that Obama's plan would include a "death panel" that would decide whether her Down's syndrome son was "worthy of treatement" or not. It's absolutely preposterous and she knows better.
~~~

Powerful summary of right wing attitudes and intentions

Please watch it.

A classic

And, when you think about it, it's pretty profound:

Bill Maher thinks it's a stupid country

and guess what? He's right:

[B]efore I go about demonstrating how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness dragging down our country, let me just say that ignorance has life and death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, 69% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Four years later, 34% still did. Or take the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their constituents." An urge they should resist because their constituents don't know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.

I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does.
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Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators and more than half can't name their congressman.
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Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth.
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The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes 24% of our federal budget. It's actually less than 1%.
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[D]id you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.

I'm sorry, folks, but this stuff is simply pathetic. I mean really, really, really pathetic.

You can read the rest of it over on The Huffington Post.
~~~
UPDATE: This was also blogged over on AMERICAblog. And here's a comment that I thought you needed to see:

The United States of America - the only country on earth where people protest to support their right to be screwed over by corporations.

Pathetic. Truly pathetic.
~~~

Just because I really like it!

That old (or, rather new) "can't-do" spirit

I just came across a blog post from July 20 entitled "In 1969, We Moonwalked and Chewed Gum at the Same Time; What Happened to Us?" and I want to urge you to go read it. Here are two paragraphs that summarize the writer's point:

Compare who we were then with what we've become, and we have to ask; whatever happened to that "can-do" American spirit? Why have we gone from gung-ho idealists, capable of solving any problem, to a country of naysayers, who can't seem to solve problems without tearing ourselves apart in the process? In the forty years from 1929 to 1969, we solved the problems of an economic system that had once caused us to slide into Depression on a regular basis; we wired almost every home in the country with electricity; we created an infrastructure that was the envy of the world; we created an educational system that turned us from a largely illiterate society into a literate one; we made it possible for everyone who wanted to, to go to college; we created a mortgage system that allowed everyone who could afford one to buy a home; and we became the preeminent manufacturing power in the world. Between 1929 to 1969, a span of 40 years, we went from one of the most devastated nations in the world to being the premier economic superpower in the world. And we did it through sheer force of will.
...
Look at what's happened in the subsequent 40 years. We've shipped almost all of our manufacturing overseas, and we make almost nothing that has an American name on it, and we have pretty much given up on the prospect of ever competing with the rest of the world. We have gone from being the largest creditor nation in the world to being the largest debtor nation in the world. We're more addicted to oil than ever before, and more dependent on others for it than at any other time in our history, despite the fact that technology exists to free ourselves from that addiction and dependence. And we are the only country in the industrialized world (although I guess we're more post-industrialized these days) that hasn't managed to cover everyone with health insurance.

There's more and it's really worth reading.

That question, "What happened to us?" is a hugely important one. I wish I knew the answer.
~~~

Quote of the day

This was from an email sent out by Sojourners today:

The federal government must take decisive action to avoid 'a potentially catastrophic loss of animal and plant life' in national parks, according to a new report that details the effects of global warming on the nation's most treasured public lands.

Yes, and not just on public lands. Are we ever going to wake up as a species and realize that this is a matter of truly catastrophic urgency?
~~~

Sad

Go read what the cartoonist has to say about it right here. It's short.

I'm trying, I'm trying...

Yes, I'm having some computer frustrations just lately! I really like the graphic above. I will definitely keep it in mind!

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Quote of the day - definitely

Take a look:

The difference between the promise of healthcare for everyone and the new mantra of health insurance reform is akin to what Mark Twain once described as "the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

It's by Norman Solomon and it's from his article entitled "The Incredible Shrinking Healthcare Reform" .

Read it and weep. (And don't forget to check out the comments.)
~~~

So good; so true

My dear friend, Walter Calahan, sent me the above cartoon!

~~~

Quote of the week - already

Oh, dear people. I so believe in this:

Lyndon Johnson had his flaws. But he was no Bill Clinton, no Barack Obama, no feel-your-pain-compromise-away-your-rights milquetoast. When that fat son of a bitch thought something was right he fought for it. Thus: Medicare. Don't like government health care? Don't sign up for it, citizens; repeal old age health insurance, you simple-minded legislators.

Suppose we had a president who did what he believed in. What if he twisted arms and bashed heads together and called in favors and crowded people into uncomfortable corners and used the great good will and support of the hopeful, desperate people whose votes put him in office in an unrelenting campaign to demand that the giant insurance companies find some other way to keep their executives in private jets and shiny suits and waterfront second homes. Or go out of business, if they prefer. What if he told us he would accept nothing less than a revolution in the way we fund health care so that there was no middleman, no profit taken out, no financiers between you and a cure, pain relief, well-being, good health and personal dignity.

All he would have to do is to say, "Single Payer." Then tell us all that single payer means government payer, not government-as-doctor. He would have to talk about health care reform, not insurance reform.

The above excerpt is from an article entitled "Sick Man Lookin’ for a Doctor’s Cure" by Christopher Cooper.
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Some bald-faced lies

Ha! "We know what you are, sir. We're just arguing about the price."

So true, so true.

UPDATE: Here's a comment I found to the above video:

We do know that the gov't option will not refuse anyone due to a pre-existing condition - healthcare profits should be capped and the public option will force down prices - public healthcare will also be good for business as they won't have to pay ransom to the HMOs - everyone wins, unless you're holding shares of some soon to be outdated HMO - the U.S. spends more per capita on healthcare than any other country in the world, yet ranks well down the list in terms of health.

People in other countries are simply flabbergasted that here, the only way to get health care is if you prove you're NOT sick. If you think about it for a minute, you will see how utterly backward that is.

Just for fun!

I just discovered this lady. Oh, what a hoot!