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The Senate Finance Committee this week rejected a government-funded public health insurance option as part of the massive overhaul of the American healthcare system. The move is seen as the direct result of vocal and sustained efforts over the summer by well-organized right wing groups mobilized indirectly by the health insurance lobby and egged on by conservative talk show hosts. Tens of thousands of conservatives gathered at the capital on September 12th denouncing the President’s health care proposal, as well as anything remotely connected to Obama. The mostly white backlash against Obama’s presidency has openly expressed paranoid delusions about his birth-place, his religion, and his ideology. It is likely no coincidence that Obama has received record numbers of death threats. A recent poll on the popular social networking site, Facebook, asked users if the president ought to be killed. The poll was taken down shortly. But it’s not just the conservative rank and file that is behaving in such a disturbing manner. Elected members of the party itself are openly beholden to the far right Christian fundamentalist movement that was once considered a fringe element of the party.

How did the Republican Party become dominated by its fringe? In his new best-selling book, intrepid reporter Max Blumenthal lays it out. Republican Gomorrah, Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, is a deeply disturbing expose of the GOP, a “bestiary of dysfunction, scandal, and crime from the heart of the movement that runs the Republican Party.” It is a movement that operates on a culture of personal crisis to justify purification through pain and abuse of adults and even children. Blumenthal predicts that the far right will exploit the economic recession even as mainstream media extol the movement’s demise.

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker, columnist, media commentator and most recently, a New York Times best-selling author.

Thank you Gifts:

Republican Gomorrah – book – $120
Speech by Max Blumenthal – $100