Go to youtube and type in "Cuban health care."

They can't ALL be fakes by Fox.

Do you want a crash course on why American health care is flawed? The consumer doesn't pay directly, so there's no way for capitalism to work. There is no competition and thus no way for prices to come down.

If you want more "solid" jobs, stop electing taxocrats en masse.

And Savage is 100% correct. No artist could make up the daily insanity of the left, not even Dali.

>> ^RadHazG:

So I suppose YOU have visited every health facility in Cuba? You can personally vouch for your statements about the quality of care there? Do you have anything beyond the lines fed to you by Faux and the Right Radio Retards?
Does America have the possibility for better care? Yes. How many have the ability to take advantage of it? Not nearly as many. That's the discrepancy comes up. Unless your very wealthy or have a solid job your odds of receiving quality health care are slim to none. Is the Right going to do anything beyond spend the next several years balled up in a corner covering its ears shouting "nonononono" and spreading lies/fear/idiocy as far as possible?
Give us facts, not quotes from Michael Savage.

Dali was fascist scum.

http://www.counterpunch.org/navarro12062003.html

The Jackboot of Dada

Salvador Dali, Fascist

By VICENTE NAVARRO

The year 2004, the centenary of Dali's birth, has been proclaimed "the year of Dali" in many countries. Led by the Spanish establishment, with the King at the helm, there has been an international mobilization in the artistic community to pay homage to Dali. But this movement has been silent on a rather crucial item of Dali's biography: his active and belligerent support for Spain's fascist regime, one of the most repressive dictatorial regimes in Europe during the twentieth century.

For every political assassination carried out by Mussolini's fascist regime, there were 10,000 such assassinations by the Franco regime. More than 200,000 people were killed or died in concentration camps between 1939 (when Franco defeated the Spanish Republic, with the military assistance of Hitler and Mussolini) and 1945 (the end of World War II, an anti-fascist war, in Europe). And 30,000 people remain desaparecidos in Spain; no one knows where their bodies are. The Aznar government (Bush's strongest ally in continental Europe) has ignored the instructions of the U.N. Human Rights Agency to help families find the bodies of their loved ones. And the Spanish Supreme Court, appointed by the Aznar government, has even refused to change the legal status of those who, assassinated by the Franco regime because of their struggle for liberty and freedom, remain "criminals."

Now the Spanish establishment, with the assistance of the Catalan establishment, wants to mobilize international support for their painter, Dali, portraying him as a "rebel," an "anti-establishment figure" who stood up to the dominant forces of art. They compare Dali with Picasso. A minor literary figure in Catalonia, Baltasar Porcel (chairman of the Dali year commission), has even said that if Picasso, "who was a Stalinist" (Porcel's term), can receive international acclaim, then Dali, who admittedly supported fascism in Spain, should receive his own homage." Drawing this equivalency between Dali and Picasso is profoundly offensive to all those who remember Picasso's active support for the democratic forces of Spain and who regard his "Guernica" (painted at the request of the Spanish republican government) as an international symbol of the fight against fascism and the Franco regime.

Dali supported the fascist coup by Franco; he applauded the brutal repression by that regime, to the point of congratulating the dictator for his actions aimed "at clearing Spain of destructive forces" (Dali's words). He sent telegrams to Franco, praising him for signing death warrants for political prisoners. The brutality of Franco's regime lasted to his last day. The year he died, 1975, he signed the death sentences of four political prisoners. Dali sent Franco a telegram congratulating him. He had to leave his refuge in Port Lligat because the local people wanted to lynch him. He declared himself an admirer of the founder of the fascist party, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera. He used fascist terminology and discourse, presenting himself as a devout servant of the Spanish Church and its teaching--which at that time was celebrating Queen Isabella for having the foresight to expel the Jews from Spain and which had explicitly referred to Hitler's program to exterminate the Jews as the best solution to the Jewish question. Fully aware of the fate of those who were persecuted by Franco's Gestapo, Dali denounced Bunuel and many others, causing them enormous pain and suffering.

None of these events are recorded in the official Dali biography and few people outside Spain know of them. It is difficult to find a more despicable person than Dali. He never changed his opinions. Only when the dictatorship was ending, collapsing under the weight of its enormous corruption, did he become an ardent defender of the monarchy. And when things did not come out in this way, he died.

Dali also visited the U.S. frequently. He referred to Cardinal Spellman as one of the greatest Americans. And while in the U.S., he named names to the FBI of all the friends he had betrayed. In 1942, he used all his influence to have Buñuel fired from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where Buñuel worked after having to leave Spain following Franco's victory. Dali denounced Buñuel as a communist and an atheist, and it seems that under pressure from the Archbishop of New York, Buñuel had to leave for Mexico, where he remained for most of his life. In his frequent visits to New York, Dali made a point of praying in St. Patrick's Cathedral for the health of Franco, announcing at many press conferences his unconditional loyalty to Franco's regime.

Quite a record, yet mostly unknown or ignored by his many fans in the art world.

Vicente Navarro is the author of The Political Economy of Social Inequalities: Consequences for Health and Quality of Life and Dangerous to Your Health. He teaches at Johns Hopkins University. He can be reached at navarro@counterpunch.org.

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by ant.

>> ^rasch187:

dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Salvador-Dali-appears-on-Whats-My-Line-1950


I knew it! Good job. *isdupe

Your video, Salvador Dali on What's My Line?, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 1 Badge!

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Salvador-Dali-appears-on-Whats-My-Line-1950

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by rasch187. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

Dali was fascist scum. http://www.counterpunch.org/navarro12062003.html

The Jackboot of Dada

Salvador Dali, Fascist

By VICENTE NAVARRO

The year 2004, the centenary of Dali's birth, has been proclaimed "the year of Dali" in many countries. Led by the Spanish establishment, with the King at the helm, there has been an international mobilization in the artistic community to pay homage to Dali. But this movement has been silent on a rather crucial item of Dali's biography: his active and belligerent support for Spain's fascist regime, one of the most repressive dictatorial regimes in Europe during the twentieth century.

For every political assassination carried out by Mussolini's fascist regime, there were 10,000 such assassinations by the Franco regime. More than 200,000 people were killed or died in concentration camps between 1939 (when Franco defeated the Spanish Republic, with the military assistance of Hitler and Mussolini) and 1945 (the end of World War II, an anti-fascist war, in Europe). And 30,000 people remain desaparecidos in Spain; no one knows where their bodies are. The Aznar government (Bush's strongest ally in continental Europe) has ignored the instructions of the U.N. Human Rights Agency to help families find the bodies of their loved ones. And the Spanish Supreme Court, appointed by the Aznar government, has even refused to change the legal status of those who, assassinated by the Franco regime because of their struggle for liberty and freedom, remain "criminals."

Now the Spanish establishment, with the assistance of the Catalan establishment, wants to mobilize international support for their painter, Dali, portraying him as a "rebel," an "anti-establishment figure" who stood up to the dominant forces of art. They compare Dali with Picasso. A minor literary figure in Catalonia, Baltasar Porcel (chairman of the Dali year commission), has even said that if Picasso, "who was a Stalinist" (Porcel's term), can receive international acclaim, then Dali, who admittedly supported fascism in Spain, should receive his own homage." Drawing this equivalency between Dali and Picasso is profoundly offensive to all those who remember Picasso's active support for the democratic forces of Spain and who regard his "Guernica" (painted at the request of the Spanish republican government) as an international symbol of the fight against fascism and the Franco regime.

Dali supported the fascist coup by Franco; he applauded the brutal repression by that regime, to the point of congratulating the dictator for his actions aimed "at clearing Spain of destructive forces" (Dali's words). He sent telegrams to Franco, praising him for signing death warrants for political prisoners. The brutality of Franco's regime lasted to his last day. The year he died, 1975, he signed the death sentences of four political prisoners. Dali sent Franco a telegram congratulating him. He had to leave his refuge in Port Lligat because the local people wanted to lynch him. He declared himself an admirer of the founder of the fascist party, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera. He used fascist terminology and discourse, presenting himself as a devout servant of the Spanish Church and its teaching--which at that time was celebrating Queen Isabella for having the foresight to expel the Jews from Spain and which had explicitly referred to Hitler's program to exterminate the Jews as the best solution to the Jewish question. Fully aware of the fate of those who were persecuted by Franco's Gestapo, Dali denounced Bunuel and many others, causing them enormous pain and suffering.

None of these events are recorded in the official Dali biography and few people outside Spain know of them. It is difficult to find a more despicable person than Dali. He never changed his opinions. Only when the dictatorship was ending, collapsing under the weight of its enormous corruption, did he become an ardent defender of the monarchy. And when things did not come out in this way, he died.

Dali also visited the U.S. frequently. He referred to Cardinal Spellman as one of the greatest Americans. And while in the U.S., he named names to the FBI of all the friends he had betrayed. In 1942, he used all his influence to have Buñuel fired from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where Buñuel worked after having to leave Spain following Franco's victory. Dali denounced Buñuel as a communist and an atheist, and it seems that under pressure from the Archbishop of New York, Buñuel had to leave for Mexico, where he remained for most of his life. In his frequent visits to New York, Dali made a point of praying in St. Patrick's Cathedral for the health of Franco, announcing at many press conferences his unconditional loyalty to Franco's regime.

Quite a record, yet mostly unknown or ignored by his many fans in the art world.

Vicente Navarro is the author of The Political Economy of Social Inequalities: Consequences for Health and Quality of Life and Dangerous to Your Health. He teaches at Johns Hopkins University. He can be reached at navarro@counterpunch.org.

This was my introduction to Dali.

Glad to hear everything's okay in RL!

So, to answer your first question, yes, I have read the Bible and many Buddhist sutras (particularly the Lotus Sutra). I'm familiar with some parts of the Koran, but have not read it in its entirety. What knowledge I have of Hinduism comes from Hindu friends.

Your interpretation of these religious texts is that they promote an obedience to a God or gods. For sure the Buddhist sutras do not, as most sects of Buddhism do not believe in sentient gods per se but in an innate (non-sentient) life force that we all share. But leaving that issue aside, I don't see how you can't have both themes (love thy neighbor/obey god). You couched it as an "either/or" solution, but why does it have to be? There's no logical reason why you can't follow your individual deity and treat other humans with compassion and respect. In fact, in most cases the themes go together--by treating other people with compassion and respect you are following the commands of your deity.

But let's take it further than that. I'm just going to quote you here: Of course you dont have to [interpret the Bible that way], and most religious people dont, read or interpret it that way. Wouldn't you agree that if most people don't interpret the Bible as a form of control, then really your interpretation is not the representative of Christian belief? For certain some people do interpret those religious texts as you have-- fundamentalists, for instance. But I would hardly consider them the majority of religious people or the average representative of religion. In short, just because you’ve interpreted a particular religious text in a particular way, it doesn’t mean your interpretation is by any means “correct” or mainstream.

On a side note, I agree with you that there's a lot of f'd up stuff in many religious texts. Take the Old Testament for example and the bloodshed and wars described within it. However, we’re looking at religion as a whole--not just superficially at the religious text but how that text is interpreted and how the people who follow that religion conduct themselves in daily life. One problem with this, as I mentioned in the last post, is that the most vocal nutcases are usually the ones that you see in the media and not your "average" religious person, so it is easy to form a biased perception of virtually all religions if you’re not associating with members of that particular religion on a daily basis. If you ask the majority of Christians what the major theme of the Bible is, you’ll almost certainly get some answer regarding love and redemption—not your interpretation or violence and control.

To address your second question about empirical evidence about the benefits of religious belief--there's lots. I don't have time now to find all the links. You’ll just have to Google it. I've seen the studies--legit ones on both physical and psychological health published in JAMA and other peer-reviewed sources--and they were enough to convince me. Very few counter-examples have been published with the exception of a recent one in 2010 that showed a correlation between religious belief and obesity, but it was such a small sample size that it could have been a chance finding or attributable to other factors (it drew its participants predominately from African-American /Hispanic communities which typically have worse health-care access than other ethnic groups).

Frankly, I’m a bit surprised at your next argument about MLK. You seem to be stating that it wasn’t MLK’s religious beliefs that prompted him to take action. All I need to do to refute this is point you to any biography of the man or his numerous speeches where he clearly states that his religious beliefs have led him to believe in both the moral imperatives of equality for all people and non-violence as a means of achieving this. Was religion the thing that made him what he was? Absolutely. Same with Ghandi. And Mother Theresa. And the Dalai Lama. And a host of other people who have attempted to or succeeded in changing the world for the better.

Next, let’s talk about the Hitchen’s challenge. I find the challenge ridiculous. Why should religion have to be somehow separate from daily life? All religions are deeply concerned with secular life—with how we live and act. Furthermore basic psychology tells us we don’t act because of any one reason but due to a complex interaction of many reasons, some of which are conscious and some unconscious, and which in the end are in our own self-interest. Hitchen’s challenge is a straw-man argument—replace religion with some other construct such as democracy or music and you will be equally unable to find anyone who meets that challenge (by promoting democracy you protect your own rights; musicians may love music but even they need to sell songs in order to pay the rent and will compose for money).

I think equally ridiculous is the argument that things such as genital mutilation have no other possible explanation or cause than religion. Wouldn’t misogyny be a much better and more rational explanation than religion? Clearly religion is used to fuel the misogyny but it would certainly be a mistake to assume that the misogyny couldn’t exist without religion. Let’s take another example—the Spanish Inquisition. The cause of that tragic slaughter was clearly secular in nature—having finally wrested the southern part of the country from Muslim rule, Ferdinand and Isabella chose Catholicism to unify a country in which many different religions co-existed. In short, religion didn’t cause the Spanish Inquisition; plain old political power-struggles did. Religion was simply the vehicle through which it was carried out.

And this is really what I’ve been saying all along—that religion is not, as you keep painting it as, the cause of humanity’s problems. It is a tool—a tool that, can be used for great good or great evil. As the folks at religioustolerance.org state: “Religion has the capability to generate unselfish love in some people, and vicious, raw hatred in others. The trick is to somehow change religions so that they maximize the former and minimize the latter.”

Later on, they go on to state that they feel that religion overall has a positive effect on society. That pretty much sums up my view of religion. If you do away with religion, you throw out the baby with the bath water. You lose the Martin Luther King Jr.’s, the Ghandi’s, the Mother Teresea’s, the Dali Lama’s of the world. It’s too a high a price to pay. For me, it’s all about dialogue—talking with others, getting them to see the common ground we all share, respect each other, and, as they said on their website maximizing the good and eliminating the bad.

As long as we keep talking—as you and I have been doing through these threads--we will keep moving forward. But I believe the instant dialogue ends—the instant you demonize the” other” and refuse to engage with them--you’ve planted the seeds of the next conflict: the next Spanish Inquisition, the next Bosnian massacre, or the next 9/11.

You have been awarded 1 Power Point for fixing the embed code for Dead Pool video Salvador Dali Paints The Sky. Thank you for helping maintain VideoSift's reliability.

>> ^rottenseed:

John Daly and tiger woods can hit up to 130mph


There we go, Have one of them do it.

John Daly and tiger woods can hit up to 130mph

netrunner

wow..
no..really.
i am actually at my desk in ..i dont even know what to call it.
ya know netrunner.
i dont know you but i have never had a problem with you OR your posts.
go check and see who voted for them..i'll wait.
but since you called ME to the table..
allow me to retort.
you sir are one presumptuous piece of work.
do you know WHY i didnt use your name in my post?
because it was never directed at you nor intended to be a passive agressive swipe at you.
if i had a problem with YOU specifically..YOU would know about it and can you guess why?
because i am open,direct and most of all honest.
how dare you sir!
how dare you presume to know anything about me based on what?
what exactly do your base your premise on?
my profile?
my comments?
some magical crystal ball?
you dont fucking know me and to TELL ME my intentions and that i dont have the BALLS to confront you up close and personal?
boy..let me tell you somethin.you better check your pussy shit at the door.
i dont play that game.you wanna call me out?
fine.
but you better know what the fuck you are talking about before you do.
and by your comment above you dont know the first thing about me.
and to think i defended your presumptuous ass when talking with the chogster.
well dont i look like a douchebag now.
you just made his case.
choggie my hero?
what the fuck kind of surrealistic dali nonsense is that?
do you think i admired choggies tactics?
i told him all the time that was no way to get people to see a different view.
but..that was his choice and he paid the consequences.
choggie challenged popular and rigid thinking.
he did so by poking and prodding and yes..trolling.
he was colorful and vibrant,original and entertaining.
he made sense some of the time and babbled conspiratorial nonsense the rest..and even that was entertaining.
i was not privy nor did i FUCKING CARE about the two of you and your homoerotic little drama.
choggie pissed off a lot of people.
i may have understood his reasoning why,even agreed with it but i never agreed with his oftimes vitriolic verbosity.
and fuck you for assuming i did netrunner.
pffft..choggie my hero.are you fucking serious?
your post alone is my poster child for the very point i was making.
choggie challenged groupthink.
his tactics sucked balls but his heart was in the right place.
do you see it yet netrunner?
are ya starting to understand just a wee bit?
YOU..sir.thought you were RIGHT.
and convinced of your own intellectual superiority you stepped forward to make a claim.
a claim based on????
nothing.
and now you find yourself reading this and i hope..dear god i hope..you are starting to feel something.
lets call this new feeling "WRONG".
you dont know everything.
your intellect is not the end all-be all.
and sometimes people just step in it..knee-deep in it.
sometimes we are WRONG even though we were so cock sure we were RIGHT.
THIS is the fundamental reason i liked choggie.
he forced people to defend a position that they were so cock sure was RIGHT.
to defend a position we have to think it through and sometimes..not every time..we find the flaw in our own presumption.
and that is how choggie referred to you specifically.
a passive agressive know-it-all presumptuous prick.
now netrunner.
hear me well.
i am mighty pissed off right now.i dont take kindly to people calling me a pussy(you did it nicely.same deal though) but i will get over myself.
your deal is with choggie..not me.
but by your comment you have made a case for what choggie claimed you to be.
prove him wrong netrunner.
because i dont really think that is who you are.i think you assumed too much and too fast and you jumped without thinking.
prove him wrong.

Dali smile creases.