What exactly is going on here?

[dusty]

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/09/28/werthmann-nazism-socialism/

How can anyone try and claim these things? Someone help me!

[dusty]

Also, it's not my intention for this to be about conservatives. This isn't suppose to be a right versus left troll.

I've just seen some of these totally crazy people weeping on the news -- yelling about how 'we' are losing our country and freedoms. Or some young-guy, no older than I am, claiming our current political climate is identical to Germany in the 1930s.. I mean really? What's going on here?

[Stinger]

I'm not the guy who will say that this is 100% about racism... but it's at least 50%.

   Seriously, I don't throw that out there lightly. I don't believe for an instant that the level of vitriol we're seeing expressed towards Obama would exist if he were white. I mean, look at Clinton. He got impeached for lying about a blowjob, and for all the things his critics said about him, not once did they feel they could openly refer to him as Hitler. The first ever heckle of a president in a congressional joint session happening within the first year of the first black man to hold the office? Anyone who claims that that's a coincidence is lying to themselves.

   The people who cry about wanting "their America back" are the people who would disown a daughter for marrying a black man. I'm not big on making an issue "black and white" (no pun intended, I swear), but I've yet to see or hear one person offering an alternative explanation that held water. I voted for him, but I was still surprised that a black man won the election, because I personally know no less than 4 people who live within 100 yards of where I'm sitting right now who still use the word "nigger" in severely less-than-ironic circumstances on a regular basis, and I don't know a lot of my neighbors.

   Our president is black, and a lot of people don't like that. That's why this has gotten so downright uncivilized.



   

[Ruckus]

Small tangent here :     


The blatant hypocrisy and irony of it all  !!!  And Obama wants to extend this garbage. Now I am starting to believe he IS a Nazi. Supporting Nazi acts like the patriot garbage act.

Who can value one Constitutional Amendment more than another ? 

   The 2nd or the 4th .... both equally important in my eyes !!!

 

"In the debate over the PATRIOT Act, the Bush White House insisted it needed the authority to search people's homes without their permission or knowledge so that terrorists wouldn't be tipped off that they're under investigation.

Now that the authority is law, how has the Department of Justice used the new power? To go after drug dealers.

Only three of the 763 "sneak-and-peek" requests in fiscal year 2008 involved terrorism cases, according to a July 2009 report from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Sixty-five percent were drug cases.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) quizzed Assistant Attorney General David Kris about the discrepancy at a hearing on the PATRIOT Act Wednesday. One might expect Kris to argue that there is a connection between drug trafficking and terrorism or that the administration is otherwise justified to use the authority by virtue of some other connection to terrorism.

He didn't even try. "This authority here on the sneak-and-peek side, on the criminal side, is not meant for intelligence. It's for criminal cases. So I guess it's not surprising to me that it applies in drug cases," Kris said.

"As I recall it was in something called the USA PATRIOT Act," Feingold quipped, "which was passed in a rush after an attack on 9/11 that had to do with terrorism it didn't have to do with regular, run-of-the-mill criminal cases. Let me tell you why I'm concerned about these numbers: That's not how this was sold to the American people. It was sold as stated on DoJ's website in 2005 as being necessary - quote - to conduct investigations without tipping off terrorists."


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/23/watch-doj-official-blows_n_296209.html

[Zeradul]

How can anyone try and claim these things? Someone help me!

I suggest to you that this is just an example of "say something extreme, get attention"  The idea that the Nazi's represented or promoted diversity is SO ABSURD, the entire comparison of Nazism extends from such extreme ignorance, I can't even begin to debate it.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Michael Moore actually releasing a movie that says Capitalism is now our enemy, AND THEN HE SELLS TICKETS TO IT.

Off in extremist religious land, you have the Westboro Baptists singing this song, entitled "God Hates the World" http://boingboing.net/2009/06/28/god-hates-the-world.html 

These are just three entities that don't have anything to say, and the more absurd their claims, the more attention they get.  They don't represent anything real or any part of the populace.  I will say this.  They are not discouraged by either of the political parties, because these types of extreme idiots reinforce people's beliefs in whatever they already believed.  Partisanship is killing us, and these three entities are ensuring we don't actually stop and think for ourselves, we instead get angry at what appears to be a real message with real people believing it, and we continue to vote for the shared dictatorship.  Either the Demicans or Republicrats.  They're nearly identical, and they love not having to work for your vote.

[zipfruder]

I'm not the guy who will say that this is 100% about racism... but it's at least 50%.

the other 25% is having the blinders taken off.

I'd like numbers on how many of the obama haters actually bothered to vote in the last election, and who will come the next one.

[Zeradul]

Oh c'mon now.  I'd think there are extremists who have called every President Hitler for something they didn't like.

The point is that these people almost don't exist.  We're talking about a hundredth or thousandth of a percent.

Now, that said, yea sure, I bet a bunch of these fuckwads are racist, because that's just more likely if you're stupid, isolated, and ignorant, and anyone who would compared Obama to Hitler clearly is those three things.

---------------

It's like an unfortunate pimple on someone's face.  Sure it's visible, and it may be hideous, but it's just a superficial blemish and not representative of anything!

This what our media has been reduced to, real news is either considered not interesting enough, too complex for the average viewer, and media outlets cover whatever gets them ratings, and outrageous claims and speech inciting such aggression and anger get the headlines, no matter how obscure of nonexistent the view they represent is.

I mean, the Westboro Baptist Cultists are on the news ALL THE TIME, and they are just an inbred family of like 32 people.  32 People!

We've been reduced to a tabloid media.  We've literally seen iraq war updates interrupted by non-news items like Anna Nicole Smith's death.  Years later I still don't know why she was famous?  She was in playboy, right? And she was a big skank that married some not relevant old guy for his money?  And she did a lot of drugs?  What?  Thanks media.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgiwkcZxj7c

------------

So go about your life and don't worry about these tabloid stories.  Recognize that's all they are, and go about your business.

[Stinger]

Have you seen the Louis Theroux documentary on the westboro baptist church, Zera? Seriously good watch, I think its called "the most hated family in America." Hadn't seen their MJ ripoff... That's special.

I really do think, though, that the number of people who are taking their dislike of our president too far isn't microscopic. They're way, way the minority, but how many people listen to Rush Limbaugh these days? I think its like 20 million a week. That is a pretty powerful base of people who hungrily devour this "Obama is a Nazi" bullshit. And Glenn Beck, his ratings are ridiculously solid, and he actually had the balls to go on TV and say that Obama hates white people. Helped his ratings, even.

I'd love to believe that the fringe here is so fringe that they don't matter, I'm just afraid that's not quite true. And even if it is, it only takes one nut job with a gun and a mind full of bullshit to do something dire.

[Zeradul]

Yes.  I <3 Louis Theroux.  Our generation's best documentarian, bar none.

-------

Sure people take a dislike to Obama.  A huge number did the same to Bush, and Clinton, and Bush, and Regan, etc, etc.  I don't think they're dislike him because they're racist though.

Has Rush Limbaugh compared Obama to the Nazis?

Where can I see Glenn Beck numbers?  I was under the impression his numbers had slid significantly since his debut, and they were encouraging him to be more outrageous to keep his ratings high enough to stay on the air.

[rue]

Oh no.  Glenn has O'Reilly numbers now. 

[Stinger]

Louis Theroux is my favorite documentarian as well! I've seen everything he's done, and can never wait for the new special.

The most recent thing I could find on less than 5 minutes digging for Glenn Becks ratings, it's as of the 27th of august. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2009/08/as-boycott-continues-glenn-becks-audience-swells.html

The little psycho's popularity is growing with the media disdain. He has a hard time getting and keeping sponsors now, but his ratings are so strong that they'd let him go without making a dime of ad revenue just to keep their base riveted with child-like anticipation as to what the looney toon will say next.

Yeah, Rush condones people for making Nazi references, then he goes and makes the Nazi references. This video has a few clips, he compares the Nazi system with Obama's healthcare plan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8w-Ll0JXSU "What we're saying here, is that this healthcare program mirrors Nazi Germany!"

[rue]

Here you are, fine sirs.

[Zeradul]

Wow, I stand corrected on both accounts.  I'm actually shocked and sickened at Beck's numbers.  I suppose they're just the same people watching O'Reilly later, but still.  At least O'Reilly is skillfully deceptive (yes I still believe that), whereas Beck is so absurd I didn't think anyone was capable of taking him seriously.

I'm saddened because he (at least for a while) was calling himself a Libertarian.  Of course, his views are nearly 100% in conflict with libertarianism, but Fox certainly doesn't care, because their job is to re-enforce the beliefs of the left, and the right.  Divide and conquer.

And I'm surprised at Rush as well, because he can try to carefully walk the line of saying "I'm not saying Obama is genocidal, I'm just saying his policies are SIMILAR to the socialist policies of the National Socialist party"  That's just an excuse to say Nazi alot in the media and scare old ladies.  He could JUST HAVE EASILY COMPARED OBAMA TO SOCIALIST SWEDEN, or -insert European country here-

Whatever, the distinction he makes is absurd.  But at least he didn't actually make the Hitler comparison.

[zipfruder]

I first heard of Blen Geck when he got his show on CNN. I watched it, then called him O'Riley Light, even tho then it seemed like he was trying to somewhat closer to the centre, and failing.

[Garr]

Haha glenn beck is good because he is so absurd.

Hannity on the other  hand,  I can't fucking stand that guy. Out of all the fox opinion shows, WHY HIM? terrible.