Democrats' Crazy Convoluted Health Reforms

Col. Reese memo: mission FINALLY accomplished, we can get out of Iraq within a year. Obama's destructive drone war in Pakistan often kills more civilians than fighters, generates enemies and must be stopped.

Guest is Dr. Raymond Bellamy of Physicians for National Health Program. With the conflicted Democratic Party, under the weak center-right neo-liberal leadership of President Obama, unable to challenge the superfluous profiteering middle-man health insurance lobby, the party is in danger of settling for piece meal reforms that leave the fundamental problems of our dysfunctional healthcare system in tact. This week’s Show features Tallahassee orthopedic surgeon Raymond Bellamy of Physicians for a National Health Program deconstructing the emerging health reforms such as the continuing illogic of mandating (with penalties) employer and individual health insurance, the cost inflating fee-for-service system, the problems with health insurance cooperatives and an enfeebled “public option” that won’t be able to “compete” with for-profit insurance companies and complicated subsidies, subsidies and more subsidies. All of these convoluted acrobatics to avoid a fight with the insurance industry, while still getting it, create lines of attack for the Republicans and others who want to preserve the privileges of the few in the current system.

Palestinian Suffering and the Democratic Party

The Gaza Blockade 101, Palestinian suffering and the Democratic Party. Conservatives dominate Sotomayor hearings while passive visionless Dems lay low when they could be pushing her on civil liberties, corporate dominance and populist election reform. Sonar killing whales. Ocean acidification. Goldman Sachs bandits resume looting you.

Guest is Phyllis Bennis, Director of the New Internationalism Project of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. explaining the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza, which is a deliberate policy of enforced hunger, poverty and suffering on Gaza’s population in an attempt to overthrow the 2006 Palestinian elections.

Shocking! Florida Congresswoman Debbie Schultz goes on TO to side with Netanyahu, not Obama, on no-two states and more settlements in recent White House meeting.

How To Win an Argument on Afghanistan

Warmonger: The Taliban oppress women so we have to fight them.
You: Malalai Joya, the Afghan women's rights leader, says the main reason for the oppression of women now is the Northern Alliance fundamentalists, who are mentally the same as the Taliban but physically different, who have come to power.

The Saudi Arabian dictatorship prohibits women from driving and requires them to get the permission of their male possessor to work. Sudan publicly flogs women who wear pants. When did you say were you enlisting to invade and overthrow these two dictatorships?

Warmonger: The Taliban are brutal thugs. They publicly flog women who violate their strict religious morality. They murder girls who go to school or throw acid in their faces.
You: These are relatively isolated incidents by extremist factions and criminal rogue individuals in the Taliban. Many Taliban condemn these excesses and support the right of women to education. You distort and exaggerate incidents like these to mislead people and justify your own killing of Afghans. Shame on you.

The Northern Alliance fundamentalists are U.S. "allies" and part of the new Aghan government. The group is responsible for murdering about 2000 Taliban prisoners of war they captured in 2001 by suffocating them in airtight shipping containers and firing bullets into them. Saudi Arabia beheads people. Singapore whips people in multiple sessions with canes soaked in water for maximum effect, often to the point of unconsciousness. So you are calling for invasions of Saudi Arabia and Singapore?

Warmonger: If we don't destroy the Pakistani Taliban, they're going to take over the country and get control of the nukes.
You: The Taliban control less than five percent of Pakistan territory, in the traditionally independent Pashtun tribal areas of western Pakistan. They have virtually no support in the rest of the country which is not Pashtun, not fundamentalist and is even secular. The chances of the Taliban taking over the country are just another disingenuous paranoid scare tactic you use to justify your destructive wars. Shame on you for misleading people.

Worse, your attacks in Pakistan are creating hatred of the United States and threatening to divide the Pakistani army into pro-Taliban and anti-Taliban camps, which would seriously destabilize the country. While the Taliban aren't going to take over the central government, other factions might. You are creating the nightmare you claim to avoid. You are endangering the security of the United States homeland and the future of my children with your policies. Stop it.

Biden Greenlights Israeli Bombing of Iran; Left Revolt Brewing in Democratic Party

Biden green lights Israeli bombing of Iran in major step toward Iran War; Mullen says it would "destabilize"; feckless Obama must say NO to Israeli extremists but instead is encouraging them. Also, Al Qaeda in Mahgreb ups Africa attacks and threatens attacks in European countries sending troops to Afghanistan. Environmentalists and Hip Hoppers souring on Obama, joining anti-war movement and gays as left revolt brews in Democratic Party. History repeats with Fort Worth gay bar brown shirt raid on anniversary of Stonewall raid.

Exiled in My Own Country on America's 233rd Birthday

Patriotic 4th of July extravaganza! Why I have become an exile in my own country and am unable to "celebrate" today. America at 233, a nation in decline and evolving into a police state with the highest incarceration rate in the world, dominated by military and financial oligarchies who now wage endless wars of aggression against foreign peoples and manipulate government regulation, avoid taxation and use taxpayer funds to enrich themselves while their reckless greed has thrown 6.5 million people out of work and a lackey president and a rotted complicit Democratic Party facilitate it all while falsely posturing as an opposition party. Original description: Celebrate the 16.5% unemployment rate and the 50 million uninsured. Celebrate Obama's assault on South Afghanistan and the death, maiming and destruction the good ole USA reigns down today -- the worst since Bush firebombed Fallujah in '04. Celebrate the 3 million refugees Obama's driven from their homes in Pakistan. Celebrate the Wall Street oligarchy's domination of the economy: special report on how Goldman Sachs Democrat-Republicans control the U.S. government and how they're going to get rich off cap and trade while you pay them with higher energy prices.

Criminal Justice Reform Wave Builds

Eyewitness story of Stonewall Inn gay riots 40 years ago this week that led to nationwide wave of organizing in following months. Criminal justice reform wave building. Obama's timid liberalism. Teaching empathy. Raise the gas tax! Stop the oil speculation!

Orlando Congressman Emerges as Anti-War Leader

Guest is Congressman Alan Grayson (Orlando), Florida's Ned Lamont and the ONLY Floridian voting NO on continued funding of Obama's wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, talking about an exit strategy for the 8 year war and the politics of extrication from quagmire. Grayson reveals that he is the #1 target of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee next year in the 8th district with a 2,000 Republican registration edge which he won last year from four term incumbment Ric Keller 52-48% in a self-financed campaign. Grayson says the U.S. is squandering trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives fighting 800 foreign Al Qaeda and other global jihadists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Also, latest quadrennial National Intelligence Council concludes U.S. power in decline and nothing we can or should do about it as Earth shifts to multi-polar world with regional powers like Brazil, Iran, China, Russia and India asserting order in their spheres.

And, Florida and Obama Feds launch largest operation yet in war on drugs, arresting 144 people in raids in all 67 Florida counties on residential grow houses. In biggest crime of all they seize 15 children from their parents and put them in state custody.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) Calls for Legalizing Drugs

Guest is Neill Franklin of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) on legalizing marijuana, cocaine and heroin!

Not acceptable: Obama's corporate litigator, prosecutor, bad tempered, conservative-enabling Supreme Court nominee. Special report on Israeli Settlements: Obama actually talking tough for once. Energy efficient passive buildings.

Sadistic Interrogation

This is one of the three reasons why there has to be an independent commission (retired judges?) to investigate the Bush, Cheney, Yoo and Company, CIA sadistic interrogation practices. #1 is they probably committed illegal acts and if we are a civilized country that goes by rule of law, well ..... #2 is there has to be an investigation and probable prosecution to draw the line in the sand to future thugs and fascists that this won't be tolerated, it's essential to retaining our national identity and stopping the slide into fascism and #3, like she says, those torture memos were just the authorizing legalese, we still don't know what REALLY happened and it is probable that other abuses occurred beyond those authorized in the memos, and the tactics authorized were probably exceeded in many instances.

No Comment II

Conservative Host Plays Back MW Show Soundbites

Hollywood, Florida conservative internet radio host David Allen (Independent Politic, 7pm weekdays) kills time editing 23 soundbites out of my show on Obama's Four Wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Terror) nonsense, plays em back on his May 25th show .... and comments.

Allen's show gets off to a slow start with a lot of plugs and treading water but kicks into high gear after five or ten minutes and goes on for a riveting two hours. While some of his excerpts take me out of context and he at times distorts what I had meant, he does make a good faith effort to comment on my actual views. This isn't a disingenuous hatchet job.

Fascinating radio.

Guantanamo, Medical Marijuana, Obama's Two Million Pakistan Refugees & Black Homophobia

Guest is Kim Russell of People United for Medical Marijuana discussing Florida's initiative campaign. Obama's 2 million Pakistan refugee disaster & argument with Florida conservative talk host David Allen. Only 6 at Guantanamo are 911 involved. Netanyahu calls Obama "childish and stupid" after Oval Office talks. Black homophobia.

Obama's Vietpakistan Disaster

Forget the first 100 days, it took 120 for Republican President Obama to blunder into his first major disaster. First, U.S. troops bombed over 100 civilians to death in Afghanistan, the largest civilian slaughter of the eight year old war. Next, Obama, Holbrook and Company coerced the Pakistani military into launching a major offensive against the Taliban, driving 1.5 million Pakistanis from their homes in the largest internal migration in the history of Pakistan. Meanwhile, Florida Rep. Alan Grayson is the first to break ranks on the Afghanistan war and votes NO on the $70 billion Obama war supplemental. Weaver endorses Grayson for the U.S. Senate nomination.

Guest is Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy, who deconstructs Obama's Pakistan disaster.

Also, Mark explains the origin of life from ultraviolet light and reports on the ascendant atheist movement in the U.S. More.

Support Deregulation, Vote Republican

Obama, Healthcare nonreform and Pakistan Quagmire

Guest is Richard Polangin of Florida Public Interest Research Group talking about the corporate campaign against affordable health care. Obama fomenting civil war in Pakistan, commits largest civilian massacre of Afghan Occupation. Depression of '09 is bottoming out!!!! Happy days are here again.

Florida Dems Pushing War on Iran Again!

(This is a commentary, not a link to any show).

After their reckless Iran naval blockade resolution backfired last year, Congressmembers Robert Wexler (who had the good sense to revoke his cosponsorship after being exposed by The Mark Weaver Show, although any causal connection is unproven), unrepentant Ron Klein and Republican Gus Bilirakis are pushing war-by-other-means-leading-to-real-war with a “rebranded” act to choke off Iran’s refined petroleum imports. This time around the destructive duo are joined by newly elected Democrat Suzanne Kosmas, who picked up one of two Republican seats in November. Funny how the Democrats keep the perpetual war pipeline full with people who are no better, and often times worse, than the Republicans they replace on the greatest issues of war and peace while diverting funds from the progressive agenda with their bloated military spending.

J Street, the new moderate Jewish lobby (they’re still a tad too center-right for me) formed as a counterweight to the extremist right American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) says the backers of the resolution are trying to “thwart” and “undercut” President Obama’s efforts to negotiate with Iran. The opponents of Obama’s agenda, J Street’s Issac Luria says, “are proposing aggressive new sanctions on Iran just as diplomatic outreach begins …. the Orwellian named “Iran Diplomacy Enhancement Act” was introduced in the House (cosponsored by Kosmas, Klein and Wexler in Florida, among others) - a bill that in reality does nothing to ‘enhance diplomacy’ but instead imposes further sanctions on Iran, directly undercutting the President’s diplomatic message.”

Neoconservative scholar Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute says “Iranians are going to die if we impose additional sanctions.” We can therefore infer that Democrats Kosmas, Klein and Wexler are advocating the killing of Iranian civilians. Kagan, who supports the sanctions, being a neocon, is at least honest. He says there is a “human cost” any time sanctions regimes take away a “vital resource” from a society. A U.S. embargo on spare aircraft parts is already causing an increase in civilian airplane crashes in Iran, so the killing is already underway.

Imagine a Chinese-dominated international embargo on gasoline and jet fuel imports into the U.S. It would drive up prices and wreak havoc in the U.S. Do you think that would drive American public opinion toward war with China?

The Senate version of the Act was introduced by …… are you ready for this? ……. Joe Lieberman. We can therefore infer as we learned in our algebra classes that at least in this critical case Joe Lieberman = Ron Klein = Robert Wexler = Suzanne Kosmas = Florida Neocons in Liberals’ clothing. The House bill is introduced by Republican extremist Mark Kirk (IL). What are these three Florida Democrats doing joining up with Bilirakis, Kirk and Lieberman?

I am heartened to see that there is a growing cry from Rick Spisak, Susan Smith and others of the FPC and other grassroots Florida Democrats for accountability from Democratic politicians and getting them on the record on the major issues.

We need to get Senate candidates Kendrick Meek and Dan Gelber on the record on this. Would they cosponsor or would they vote for Joe Lieberman’s Act? This is the most important vote on Iran so far in 2009. It’s major folks. It could get us into a war with Iran.

You can hear more about the coming war with Iran, along with Obama’s alarming bumbling into a war in Pakistan, on the May 9 Mark Weaver Show — The Leading Edge

These Democrats will probably weasle by telling you that they support Obama’s diplomacy but they want to back him up with the coercion of more sanctions as another “bargaining chip”. Why this is destructive, needless and will probably backfire is the subject of part 2. I heard Wexler tell Nicole Sandler on WINZ last year that if it comes down to it, we should bomb Iran. And of course, not having any political background whatsoever, she left him unchallenged.

The Tragedy of Obama's First 100 Days

100 Days of Lip Service: The Tragedy of Republican President Obama: No Withdrawal Yet from Iraq, Escalating Afghanistan, Drone Attacks Worsening Pakistani Rebellion, Covering Bankers' Asses and Stalling Recovery, NAFTA Renegotiation Now Off Table, Gays in Military on Back Burner, Mortgage Relief? For it but Didn't Fight ....; also Launching "Mark Weaver Armed Forces Radio!"

Conditions for Normalization of Relations with the U.S.A.

(This is a commentary that does not link to any show).

With Emperor Obama declaring that “the ball is now in the Castros’ court” after his minimalist token easing of the Bush travel/remittance restrictions on Cuba and demanding that Cuba free all political prisoners, restore freedom of speech and press and end its 20% tax on remittances,

with ever-pandering and behind-the-curve U.S. Senate candidate Kendrick Meek, opposing even these token gestures and running for Senator of Hialeah,

all this despite Monday’s Bendixen poll showing a “stunning change of heart” in CUBAN-AMERICAN attitudes showing 67% approval for totally ending the trade and travel embargo ….

Mark Weaver, host of the explosive Mark Weaver Show, last Saturday (4/18) urged the Castros to hold firm and issued conditions for restoration of diplomatic relations with the U.S. of A.

1) The U.S. must return Guantanamo to Cuba since it is illegally occupying a sovereign nation on land it stole through force of war.
2) The U.S. must restore the freedom of travel to its own people and end their imprisonment north of the Florida Straits.
3) The U.S. must restore habeas corpus rights to all detainees on Cuban territory and at its Bagram prison and other prison sites and release the hundreds of detainees who are believed to have been innocently swept up in the War on Assymetric Tactics.
4) The U.S. must free its own people and establish a single-payer healthcare system that eliminates the predatory extortion and profit making greed of the American medical industry taking advantage of the sick, and re-socialize health personnel to care for the sick out of compassion rather than with Norte Americano dollar signs in their eyes, as Cuba has done.
5) The U.S. shall bring freedom of speech to the American Left who are shut out of any meaningful influence in Americano sociedad by the corporate profit making Mainstream media such as the Miami Heraldo, the Orlando Sentinel and the mere 60 radio stations that Thom Hartmann (the #1 progressive host) is on while Rush Limburger is on 600 stations, which is why people like Trish of the Pensito Review can be be ecstatic over Obama’s tragic minimalist center-right presidency and ready to work hard for his re-election and eight years of tragedy and opportunistic lost opportunities. Cuba will NEVER turn its media over to wealthy ownership and right wing domination.
6) The U.S. shall free the dozens of political prisoners who have been jailed on trumped up charges of “providing material support for terrorism” by making charitable donations to Mid Eastern charities that have working relationships with the elected governing Hamas and Hezbollah Parties of Lebanon and Palestine.
7) The U.S. shall fully fund and socialize its education system from age two through vocational school and college through progressive income taxes, as Cuba has done, giving us the best performing education system in all of Latin America according to the Stanford Professor interviewed last year on the Mark Weaver Show.
Cuba will NEVER end its 20% tax on remittances, dummy! That’s how we fund free health care and education for the people receiving the remittances!

Upon fulfillment of these conditions Cuba will
1) End its trade and travel embargo of the U.S. which has impoverished the Americano people.
2) Graciously allow the U.S. into the Organization of Americano States.
3) free any political prisoners who have not engaged in material violent subterfuge of the Cuban government
4) legalize all political parties and hold free regular elections within the context of a political system of working class control of the media and full public financing of elections based on nonpaid signature gathering with all private contributions over $100 to be banned
5) We might even be willing to work with those Cuban exile families who unfairly had their properties confiscated in the Cuban revolution, but only upon determination that these families had not extorted their properties through coercion and force, stolen them or exploited their employees or previous property owners to gain these properties or used ties with the Bautista dictatorship for same.

Futhermore, upon normalization of relations with the new Socialist States of America, we shall invite Mark Weaver to broadcast his show out of Havana, throw a ticker tape parade down the Malecon for uniting our two nations, and invite him and his friends like Betsy Angert, Benjamin Kirby and other Real Progressives to our finest hotel on our finest beach where they can all sip Mojitos.

U.S. Green Party's Highest Office Holder Talks

Guests are newly elected (80% win!) Arkansas State Rep. Richard Carroll (Green Party), and Florida Progressive Radio host SINFONIAN talking about his famous Keith Olberman, Pensacola Tea Party crashing video. Weaver joins in with what he would have said. Also, Obama's Pakistan policy eclipsing Iraq as #1 foreign policy disaster. Carbon dioxide causing ocean acidification and killing Florida's reefs. Latest on the New American Police State: Florida Keys teens charged by Taliban prosecutor with felony child porn and facing 15 years for videotaping legal sex in bedroom. Riviera Beach Taliban ban low pants, charge 20 young Black men. Public defender sues for violation of Constitutional First and Fifth Amendment rights.

The Green Party Alternative

The Bush Torture Memos and Obama's failure to investigate takes us another step toward a police state. Also, U.S. Green Party co-founder Greg Gerritt talking about Green Party campaigns, the war economy, the environment and the economic crisis. Obama's timid liberalism.

New Solar City, Strip Searches, Teenage Sexting, Progressives and Liberals, Afpakistan, Gaza

Gay film star Jack Wrangler dies; Florida's new "Solar City"; strip searching 13 year olds and D.A. filing pornography charges against teenage "sexters"; Progressives, Liberals, Lies and Democrats; Obama Report -- wading even deeper into Afpakistan quagmire and his Republican-heavy hedge fund Administration; latest on Israel's war crimes in Gaza.

For the second time, Blogtalk censors have taken their axe to my show description. Note how their filter rejected my use of the word pornography in the above description and forced me to change it on blogtalk to "***nography" to get past the filter. Orwellian and Stalinesque, huh? Also stupid.

Boycott the Democratic Party

Why we must boycott the Democratic Party (except for genuine left candidates): speech to the Florida March for Peace in Melbourne. Guest is march organizer Jeff Nall talking on the anti-war movement. Depression era Bushvilles springing up nationwide, including St. Pete, Florida. Iowa and Sweden legalize gay marriage. Also, despicable Florida Attorney General running campaign ads with taxpayer money that exaggerate online sex predation and foment fear. Breaking news: Timothy Geithner is a Republican.

How Larry Summers Nixed Derivative Regulation in 1998 'Cause It Threatened Profits

Conficker C may attack computers on April Fool's. Zombie banks, Zombie Democrats, Obama is a zombie, even I was a zombie. Timothy Geithner and the corporate Democrats' role in the floundering mortgage-bank recovery. New book on gays in the military. Latest shocking revelations on Israel's "holy war" in Gaza. Growing threat of a Mideast War as Netanyahoo comes to power bent on bombing Iran and Obama too compromised to stop him.

Solar Cells, Terrorist Sympathizer, Challenging Dem Incumbents, Israeli War Crimes, Jewish Dems Kill National Intelligence Appointment

Guest Jeff Hauser of new Accountability Now PAC supporting leftish challengers in Democratic primaries. Now there's an idea. Rooftop solar cells and distributed grid green electricity. Gainesville is first city in U.S. to pay over-market for renewable energy. Why Florida House Republican leader Adam Hasner is a demagogic terrorist sympathizer as Amnesty Int'l documents Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Jewish Democrats trash Obama's truth-telling national intelligence council appointment.

Charles Schumer and Steve Israel (NY), among many others, forced the Obama Administration to withdraw the nomination of Charles Freeman as Chair of the National Intelligence Council for talking truthfully about the Israeli government's foreign policies. Freeman would have been in charge of the administration's all-important National Intelligence Estimates. Freeman says "the tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assasination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods and an utter disregard for the truth."

Watch for cooked intelligence regarding the Mid East coming from his successor nominee. What's so outrageous about this is that the Israeli government apologists consistently use these tactics against anyone who challenges their distorted worldview -- including me and you if we ever get their attention. I keep hearing this stuff time and again as I follow these issues. This is what they do to Jimmy Carter even. Be prepared to fight back!

Adam Hasner is a Terrorist Sympathizer

We know that Florida House Majority Leader Adam Hasner’s logic is wingnut sick and he must be denounced for his McCarthyite attacks on Adam Bedier and United Voices for America, but if you apply his own logic to himself, one has to say that, by his own definition, he is probably a terrorist sympathizer. He condones, justifies, even applauds Israel’s assault on Gaza, which killed 1300 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, women, children. You watched it on TV. You ought to know. Bill Moyers rightfully called it “state terrorism”. Amnesty International just came out with a report documenting numerous war crimes committed by the Israel Defense Forces. Check it out. The IDF dropped white phosphorous on civilians. They bombed UN schools, even the headquarters. They killed children with Hellfire missiles “Made in Orlando”. Adam Hasner is a terrorist sympathizer. Prove me wrong. But don’t prove to me that he is justified being a terrorist sympathizer. There’s a big difference. Every editorial board in this state ought to be denouncing him for the obvious. He is a terrorist sympathizer.

Hasner calls Adam Bedier a “known terrorist sympathizer” because Adam has defended University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, who was coerced into plea bargaining guilty and is now serving five years on charges related to his making donations to charities related to Hamas. From the press accounts at the time it sure looked to me like al-Arian was convicted of a political “crime”. I think he’s the classic example of a political prisoner. Yes, it does happen here in the U.S. in-denial police state.

Now let’s assume for a moment, I’m sure Hasner would verify this if you ask him, that Hasner donates to Jewish charities in Israel. I would hope he does. By his own logic, and the logic of the U.S. police state prosecutors, such money may work its way to families with members serving in the Israel Defense Forces, or replace money that is used such. I’m sure Hasner would love it if it did and would tell you so. “Support the troops,” you know. That aside, Hasner supports U.S. military aid to the Israel Defense Forces that finances the wanton attacks on civilians. So Hasner provides “material support for state terrorism” doesn’t he? Doesn’t he? Say yes. You need to break through the rightwing brainwashing you are under and it helps by verbalizing the new modes of thinking. Out loud.

We all have to start denouncing the disingenuous hypocritical distorted demonizations of Hamas as a terrorist organization. Hamas is a complex political party with a military wing and a political wing. Like our political parties it has moderates and radicals (like Hasner). Hamas provides social services, education, garbage pickup, etc., which al-Arian was probably contributing to. Hamas won the majority of seats in the 2006 parliamentary elections in what international observers called free and fair. Some of Hamas’ leaders and members engage in isolated attacks on Israeli civilians as part of their war to stop Israel’s land confiscations of their land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. (Just last week Israel demolished 88 Palestininan homes in Arab Jerusalem, which can be construed as more state terrorism only using bulldozers instead of bombs.) But Hamas is no more a terrorist organization than the Israeli government is. If I were a radical, I would get down in the radical mud with Hasner and call ISRAEL the terrorist organization. But being a moderate, I know that it’s not constructive to solutions. Israel is no more a terrorist organization than Hamas is.

People, you can’t let the rightwingers, even those in the Democratic Party who keep repeating and reinforcing the demonizations of Hamas, keep clubbing you into submission with their intimidation and use of fear. Every time someone reduces Hamas to a terrorist organization you must interrupt the conversation and correct them. Every time you see it in print or on TV, you must get on the horn and demand that the media stop spreading rightwing distortions as if they were facts.