Personally, the sight of someone carrying a poster with a swastika on a poster to call someone else a Nazi makes me sick. And while we on the Right complain about the double standard, at least the higher standard falls on us. We need to do our best to live up to that standard.
It doesn't mean we can't be silly or funny. I think the pink noses for the pork are pretty funny. But there's a clear line and the idiot crossed it.
But it is sad how those on the Left that are most offended think Che Guevara is a fashion statement.
Family services in New Jersey have removed three children with Nazi-inspired names from their home. The family came to the attention of the media when they sued a grocery store who refused to supply them with a birthday cake for one of the children, Adolf Hitler Campbell. The Express-Times of Easton, PA, reports that the spokesman for the agency, Kate Bernyk, refused to comment saying they do not comment on specific cases.
While I'm sympathetic to the desire to keep the stories of children out of the public eye, we have long since passed that point. The public has the right to know whether the children were removed simply because the agency did not approve of what the children were being taught by their parents, or if there is actual suspected abuse.
It may make us recoil in horror at the thought but even Nazis have the right to raise their children according to their beliefs. And if that was not the cause of the removal of the children from their home, then full disclosure will prevent the case from being a racist cause célèbre.
To err is human. To really screw things up, you need a computer. If you invented the internet, you can be a complete idiot. Former Vice President Al Gore giving the commencement address at Carnegie Mellon University told the graduating class there were two "special generations", the Founding generation and the generation that defeated Fascism. We can argue about the latter. After all, they did vote for Franklin Roosevelt four times. But to say that there are only two "special generations" is to miss much of United States history. Certainly the generations that defeated slavery or fought at Belleau Wood or charged San Juan Hill might have some say in the matter. The generations that originally settled this continent with few resources while facing hostile natives certainly deserve some mention. The succeeding generations that spread across the continent building a new and proud nation out of the wilderness could each lay claim to being special, too.
Perhaps Gore hung around the Oval office too much when Bill Clinton desperately searched for some sort of legacy, a pathetic baby-boomer self-indulgent attempt at self-justification when all that was ever achieved by Clinton was tawdry self-gratification. It might explain Gore's holier-than-thou crusade.
Gore describes climate change as the greatest threat to civilization in the history of our planet. He excludes, of course, the black plague, the threat of thermonuclear war, the Hun invasion of Europe, and today's threat of thermonuclear terrorism.
But we're looking for a reason to make the next generation special. Gore claims they can be special if they successfully fight global warming. Let's compare the threat of Fascism with the threat of global warming. The total cost in human life of World War II is estimated at 56,125,262. Communism is estimated to have killed 100,000,000people. Global warming has resulted in one Nobel prize for Al Gore and a bunch of puffed-up self-styled intellectuals coming up with questionable policy recommendations that will have little effect except to the global economy.
Objectionable, even horrible, to be sure, but not on a par with Fascism.
A Polish Catholic, she spirited some 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto, displaying casual and extraordinary courage. She kept a list of the children she had saved, hoping one day to reunite them with their parents – although, in the event, almost all lost their families in Treblinka. In 1943, she was arrested by the Gestapo and tortured. Her legs and feet were broken, but she refused to give up her list. She was sentenced to death, but rescued, whereupon – almost unbelievably – she went back to work.
Here, though, is the sentence that leapt off the page at me: “Last year she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, eventually won by Al Gore.” Al Gore!
I'm sure Irena Sendler never gave her carbon footprint a second thought. Ironically, neither does the former Vice President. But Sendler's example and her courage reminds us that when it comes to the idiot politicians of the week, we can safely award the prize to the Nobel Peace Prize committee that chose to cast her great works aside in favor of honoring a self-righteous hypocritical scold who happened to make a terrible movie. It would take a committee of complete idiots to not honor great physical and moral courage in the service of humanity and instead honor the former vice president just to make a symbolic gesture against the inhumanity of the internal combustion engine.
Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, past chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, said signers are not alleging that the Chinese government is the equivalent of the Nazi regime, but that China, like Germany in 1936, is trying to use the Olympics as a public relations tool to deflect attention from its record.
The declaration was organized by Greenberg and Rabbi Haskel Lookstein of New York — both Orthodox Jews — and the Washington-based David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.
Several representatives of Judaism's major U.S. branches and large Jewish institutions signed on. They include Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism; Neil Goldstein and Richard Gordon of the American Jewish Congress; and Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, an association of Conservative rabbis.
Americans only seem to remember Jesse Owens and they forget how important the Olympics were to Nazi Germany.
With the introduction of the Friday afternoon cocktail, pinch-hitting for the Jo Egelhoff on Thursdays, and column writing on Tuesdays, we’re moving the Idiot Politician of the Week to Saturdays. Lucky for us, the move snagged us a last-minute entry this week. On any given week, the idiot politicians are thicker than mosquitoes in July. This week we seem to already be in summer re-runs, and we’re only in May.
Badger Blogger has been tracking the idiotic behavior of State Representative Jason Fields (D-Milwaukee). Fields, you may recall, was arrested not that long ago for driving under the influence. What made it ironic was Fields’ participation in the effort to get Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk to run against then-incumbent Peg Lautenschlager in the Democratic Primary for State Attorney General. Fields avoided the “Idiot Politician of the Week” prize by promising to accept the consequences of his actions.
Fast-forward a few weeks, and Fields has suddenly found Alan Eisenberg. Fields entered a plea of “not guilty” and then claimed it was a miscommunication with his attorney. Meanwhile, Fields found himself in sympathy with someone from the Hmong community who was stopped for drunk driving and then decided to resist arrest. As Bruce at Badger Blogger put it so well, Fields decided to side with someone who was seen on video resisting arrest over the police officers that protect his neighborhood. But Fields knows his natural constituency: ethnic drunk drivers.
Speaking of public drinkers, I’d pick on Senator Hillary Clinton for not being able to get coffee from a coffee machine, but until I have my first cup of the day I’m pretty helpless myself. Besides, remember the good old days when you could just get a cup of coffee? When your choices were black, cream, sugar? No, but we are going to pick on the Senator for choosing a product that clearly exploits the poor campesinos in a way that’s harmful to the environment. After being befuddled by a coffee maker, the Senator should have announced loudly, “There’s no Fair-Trade, environmentally friendly, high-tariff coffee option on this machine! I bet this stuff got into the country because of NAFTA, which my opponent secretly supports!”
Back to Wisconsin, State Representative Don Pridemore (R) once again demonstrates a skin thin enough to be translucent. Rather than let the matter drop, the state representative again lashes out at the McBride-Bucher-WRTL-Robinson cabal determined to challenge him in a primary election all because he might be opposed to anonymous political speech. You see, it’s the Democrats driving him to paranoia. Meanwhile, he knows that McBride and her husband have stolen the frozen strawberries and if he’s given just a little more time he can prove it. There’s a duplicate key to his office. He knows that because of the WRTL robocalls to his district. But he’s outsmarted them, you see. Even if they’re anonymously whispering behind his back. And please ignore the ball bearings in his hand.
The runner-up Idiot Politician of the Week is Racine Mayor Gary Becker. Becker found himself the featured speaker at the May 1st rally for illegal aliens sponsored by the dubious Voces De La Frontera. Becker is obviously not nearly as clever as the mayor of Racine’s northern neighbor. Mayor Barrett showed up, shook a few hands, and um, er, had a “previous engagement” to attend rather than be seen supporting calls for general amnesty for every illegal alien. Nope, Becker stuck it out among the sombreros, Mexican flags and Spanish chants. You know, all those great indicators of how even illegal immigrants are assimilating into our culture.
But this week’s Idiot Politician of the Week is Baltimore City Councilman James Kraft. Kraft took the prize when he declared that the choice between paper and plastic at the grocery store is the choice between freedom and The Holocaust. (ht: Fred Dooley)
A broad slate of environmental proposals that would ban plastic bags from city grocery stores and add a 10-cent deposit for all types of bottles purchased in Baltimore came under fire Thursday at a citywide hearing.
The measures, sponsored by City Councilman James Kraft, include banning plastic bags and Styrofoam cups, and adding a 10-cent deposit for plastic and glass bottles of soda and beer — all part of an aggressive green agenda touted by Kraft, solidifying his reputation as the council’s environmental crusader.
Painting the proposed laws in broad strokes, Kraft likened his efforts as similar to confronting the threat of Nazi Germany prior to World War II.
“We don’t want to be criticized by future generations for not doing enough now as were those who dealt with the Germans then,” Kraft said at a hearing in the headquarters of the Living Classrooms in Fells Point.
Perhaps the councilman might consider breathing into a paper bag rather than mandating them at the grocery store. His penchant for hyperventilating may have already led to hypoxia, the resulting brain damage causing him to become our Idiot Politician of the Week. His prize will be delivered after we finish invading Poland.
Mrs. Bertholt: "You elect judges in the United States?"
Judge Haywood: "Yes, in some states."
Mrs. Bertholt: "I didn't know that."
Judge Haywood: "Well, it's either one of the virtue or one of the defects to our judiciary system. I thought it was one of the virtues until last year when I was defeated."
Don Black, of West Palm Beach, recently made the donation, according to campaign filings. He runs a Web site called Stormfront with the motto, "White Pride World Wide." The site welcomes postings to the "Stormfront White Nationalist Community."
In related news, here's a great picture of the new Ron Paul blimp getting ready to take off:
