CNN commentator Roland S. Martin has a piece up today (July 22) entitled, Obama birth issue is nutty that proceeds to make good fun of the wingnuts. But since one of George W. Bush’s first serious actions as President after 9-11 was to arrange the biggest government overhaul since the New Deal – by inventing the so-called “Department of Homeland Security” – there are Americans out in the hinterland who are suddenly quite confused about their legal status. I’m one of them, and so is recent Republican Presidential candidate John McCain. Who, like me, actually wasn’t born in the United States of America.

McCain, like me, was a Navy brat. He was born in the Panama Canal Zone, I was born in the Philippines. There used to be a clear law on the books that held the children of American citizens born in a foreign country are indeed ‘natural born’ American citizens, even if they automatically get dual citizenship for the country in which they were born. I had that until I was 18, though after that I would have had to formalize, and I was never very fond of Ferdinand and Imelda “Shoe-Lady” Marcos. So I let it slide. Still, if nobody questioned McCain’s citizenship qualification for POTUS, the fervor with which wingnuttia rants about Obama seems even crazier. I mean, even if Hawaii hadn’t been a state when he was born, did not all Hawaiians receive automatic citizenship when it WAS made a state? It was a territory, after all. Like Puerto Rico. Which apparently some wingnuts in Congress think is a foreign country too, thus Judge Sonia Sotomayor couldn’t be a citizen. Weird.

The last day job I held was in the period after 9-11 when DHS became the designated troublemaker for Americans of all kinds. My problems started when Human Resources was informed that my birth certificate didn’t qualify as “proof of citizenship” for me to have gotten the job. So I responded that my state driver’s license and Social Security card should suffice if HR couldn’t manage to read the line that designated US citizenship for both my parents and myself on that Philippine-issued birth certificate. They told me I had to get a birth certificate from a state here in the US. So I asked them which state they’d suggest I pretend to be born in, thinking there must be a racket in California or somewhere that provides fake birth certificates for people like me who weren’t actually born there. They were not amused.

Then they found a “discrepency” on my Social Security card. Seems I had used the name I’ve always gone by in addition to the first name on my birth certificate, when I had the last name changed after I got married back in 1969. I was informed they could no longer make my pay checks out to my legal name (which WAS on the card), and which is the name on my bank account. The bank then proceeded to tell me it couldn’t cash my checks! I was informed I’d have to take unpaid time off work – for which I’d get in trouble because no one would approve it – to stand in line at the SS office to have the name changed again. So I could work. I began to get the very strong feeling they didn’t want me there.

So I wrote a nice missive to HR telling them that I’d been paying taxes for more than 35 years under the NUMBER on my SS card, and that the IRS – a duly authorized agency of the federal government – had never once complained or refused my money. I further wrote that when I got married, I had my named changed to his on that card, and nobody ever asked to see a court order or required me to get one that “legally” changed my last name. In fact, I had dropped my given middle name entirely and used the first initial of my original last name on all legal matters from that time on. Also a CUSTOM, not something for which I ever had to go to court. I further said that if I were to be required per DHS’s audit to legally change my name, they were going to have to go after every single married woman in the country who had ever taken her husband’s name or used their maiden name’s initial for their middle. That’s about 55% of the entire population, not something this nation had the money to accomplish while spending $10 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I did end up quitting that job just because I know when I’m not wanted. Now write full time freelance, and my boss has never asked me to prove I’m a citizen or argued with me about what name I care to attach. Oh… and he uses direct deposit to pay me, in the account with my terrorist name attached.

I call it my “terrorist” name because DHS was supposed to be chasing terrorists, not messing up the lives and livelihoods of lifelong American citizens and taxpayers in good standing. Thus they must have believed I’m some sort of terrorist. I prefer the title “Terrierist,” since I’m quite fond of small dogs. You’d think these folks would have better things to do in the wake of 9-11, perhaps going after real terrorists or something. Guess that’s what I get for thinking.

I presume these crazy wingnuts would be doing this same weird Dervish Dance if John McCain were President right now. I mean, he absolutely wasn’t born in the United States, while Barack Obama absolutely was. And while they’re at it, they should make a new law that says the wives of military officers stationed overseas are forbidden to visit them or live with them, on the off-chance a baby might be born somewhere outside of Kansas. Sheesh!

Most of these idiots are so dumb and so ill-educated that they can’t even find California on a map, much less Panama or Philippines or Iraq. Why are they being given time and attention in the media? Shouldn’t we be ashamed of the morons among us, the fact that they represent a good 20% of our population? Is that inbreeding, environmental toxins, or just insane?

Whatever it is, I’m glad I’m not one of them. And I think there should be an IQ test administered to all employees of the Department of Homeland Security to ensure we don’t have to actually deal with any of these defectives in our day-to-day lives.

We begin the New Year with diminished expectations for the Obama administration in the face of worsening economic conditions following the Bushies’ End Game looting of the nation’s wealth. Predictions are now beginning to acknowledge that there’s not much hope for recovery until 2011 at least, credit card companies have jumped into the looting frenzy en masse to jump interest rates approaching 50%, juggled due dates and credit cut-offs even for cardholders and small businesses who have spotless records and pay off balances every month. Ranks of the unemployed continue to swell, reaching official levels close to 10% and unofficial levels over 15%. Citizens continue to die for lack of accessible, affordable health care, and states are now cutting their Medicaid and SCHIP coverage due to diminished income.

Nothing particularly happy about this New Year. Meanwhile, over in the Middle East where things have been decidedly unhappy for at least 4,000 years, Israel is at it again. Eight days’ worth of air bombardment of cities, towns and refugee camps have killed more than 400 Palestinians and injured more than 2,000 in retaliation for Hamas rockets fired into southern Israel across the border by that hopelessly terrorist enclave of perpetual victimhood and hate no other Arabic nations care to embrace for resettlement, knowing the players are incurable barbarians just like Israel does. After generations of forced incarceration in camps, this predicament was entirely predictable 60 years ago when the arrangements were made.

On Saturday morning leaflets were dropped into Gaza warning residents to flee with their families “for your own safety,” though where they should flee was not specified. 12 hours later IDF ground forces, under cover of tank and mortar fire amassed at the borders, moved on in.

So far 4 Israelis have been killed, 59 injured. While I can applaud the latecoming recognition of many in the region that what the Palestinians have been doing with their rockets and suicide bombers in Israel is indeed genuinely and properly labeled “terrorism,” I wonder when the civilized world is ever going to live up to its self-bestowed title and figure out some other, more effective response to terrorism than all-out war. Oh, and I do have a question about the timing of all this nastiness…

Is Israel attempting by this mass slaughter to dictate to incoming [on January 20] US President Barak Obama what his administration’s policy should be per this eternal conflict, or is it simply getting its licks in while the Bushies are still ostensibly “in charge?”

Three of the four registered voters in my household voted more than two weeks ago, just 4 days into the early voting period here in North Carolina. That’s me, my hubby and our grandson who turned 18 in May. Daughter is voting today, mostly because she has this ‘thing’ about voting on election day. Then she and grandson are headed for Asheville to tend lines (I doubt there will be one here, more than three quarters of this end of the county early voted), then to an election party expected to go late into the night. Hubby and I will be off to our county seat, where we’ve been recruited as “Poll Ninjas” by the Dem chair, there to assist in case anybody is challenged, lawyers standing by.

Paper ballots again this year too, since Diebold got kicked out of the state after throwing the 2004 election into utter turmoil (it took months to sort out some state races, so many split-ticket votes had been compromised! Filling in the dot isn’t that hard. Counting them isn’t that hard either.

But it’ll be morning before we know the actual results, so I thought I’d offer a true story about voting out in “real America”…

Election Day in Wilburton, Oklahoma

It was 1982, a midterm election generally, but important locally for the city government, police chief and sheriff, county wigs. I worked as a typesetter and editor for the local weekly newspaper – it was the county seat, but there wasn’t enough going on in the county for more than a weekly. The newspaper office was across the street (little more than an alley) from the courthouse, police station and jail. Next door to the funeral home, across a vacant lot that was part of their big lawn.

There were no radio or television stations in the county, so the citizens started gathering on the funeral home lawn about a half hour before the polls closed. They brought blankets, lawn chairs, coolers, picnic baskets and children, by 7 p.m. the place was packed. Fred the publisher had a gigantic blackboard on a stand that was marked with grids in white paint that he’d used to post vote tallies as they came in for at least 4 decades. It was a regular feature for the county, families had been gathering there for generations.

Once the candidates and offices were written-in on the blackboard, we carried it outside and set it right in the middle of the street between our office and the courthouse where the votes were being counted. As the precinct totals were released, a runner would bring it to Fred in his big lawn chair, he’d nod, then I would hand it to the pressman precariously perched on a ladder, chalk in hand. He’d add the tally under the proper columns, and the people on the funeral home lawn would cheer or boo by turns. The totals had to be refreshed each time another precinct came in, and that was my job. I had a nice pocket calculator to help me with the math, and if I got it wrong I knew for sure I’d hear about it immediately from the crowd.

The last of the ballot boxes didn’t come in from far corners of the county until nearly 9 p.m., and by then many of the families with small children had made their way back home. But new people kept the lawn full as factory shifts were over and others got off work. The winners and losers were known by about 10 p.m. unless it was a very close race. We had one that year for Sheriff, it went all the way to 11 before we knew who won.

Now, we the “Paper People” didn’t get out of there until 3 a.m., since after all that song and dance for the audience we had to put the Special Election Edition together, get it printed and distributed. Made for a very, very long night, but I remember it fondly as my all-time favorite election.

Fred died some years ago, I have heard that the people don’t gather on the funeral home lawn anymore to watch the election results. They stay behind closed doors and watch Fox News, wait until the next day to find out who won the local contests. That’s very sad to me, just another symptom of the fog of depression that settled over Oklahoma when it abandoned its fervently Democratic status in favor of these past 8 years’ worth of fear-mongering, hate and insult. I don’t guess there will ever be a friendly community election again in that part of the country, so this little bit of Americana has gone the way of the dinosaur. I miss it, especially on an election day so full of Hope as this one!

Janis Joplin once sang someone else’s song very poignantly – “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose…” – and that’s semi-true in my experience. We all make choices about what’s important in our lives, and usually become enslaved to that which we choose. At the low end of the scale there’s never enough, just paying the bills is a constant struggle. At the high end of the scale there is also never enough. The thirst for more and more and more rules lives and ruins them too.

As Wall Street melts down we’re suddenly informed we must Spend, Spend, Spend!!! They can never make up their minds. Either we’re not saving enough or we’re not spending enough, it’s always our fault. I call bullshit. Slave wages have not even kept up with the cost of living, they can’t have it both ways.

I read about a 50-something day care worker yesterday who a coworker noticed sitting in the corner crying. When asked what’s wrong, she finally said she couldn’t feel her face. The coworker was alarmed, saw one side of her face drooping as they were talking, speech slurring. She drove her friend to the hospital, but the woman just cried harder and wouldn’t get out of the car. Said yes, she must be having a stroke, but if she walked in the door she’d lose everything – house, car, meager income (job)… she was terrified. Her friend finally talked her into going, she is still in the hospital and her coworkers are trying very hard to raise the tens of thousands she’ll need to pay for the care. There is no insurance at that end of the scale.

Some people on that discussion board from Europe and Australia were horrified. Simply trying to imagine what it must be like to face utter ruin just because you need to see a doctor – when you might be dying. Where dying is the “reasonable” choice, just so your children aren’t left bankrupt. Every other civilized country in the world provides basic health care for their citizens. Only in America…

This is wrong. We all work, much harder than the greed-head capitalists who skim the wealth we create for themselves. There are only so many hours in a day, and humans need sleep. If two full-time minimum wage jobs or three part-time minimum wage jobs – 16 hours a day, the kids are home alone – can’t provide a decent income, it’s NOT because these people are “lazy” or “shiftless” or anything. That’s wrong too. Now that Wall Street has cashed-out, millions who are very much willing to work won’t have jobs – there won’t be any. Great Depression v2.0. This is what unfettered ‘free market capitalism’ has wrought. It’s not pretty, and I sincerely doubt Jesus would approve.

So the haters are busy whipping up more hate. Buzzwords like “socialism,” taxing the rich, scary black people, gays and terrorists around every corner… “God’s Voter Guide.” That’s f***ing obscene! Dogs and cats living together, total chaos!!! Booga Booga, blah, blah, blah, Osama bin Laden, blah, blah, blah, Barack HUSSEIN Obama, blah, blah, blah. Disgusting.

We need change, not hate. Hate’s not going to help anyone, it’s just going to cause more pain. Maybe if the so-called Christians spewing hate 24-7 and worshipping golden bulls on Wall Street were exposed as the liars, posers and hypocrites they truly are, we could finally all work together to improve our nation and everyone’s lives. As if this were the United States of America, sans secessionists and domestic terrorists in the White House.

There’s a difference between “socialism” that has the government working for the people, and “socialism” that has government working for the corporate greed-heads. One is how the rest of the free world functions these days. The other is fascism. Things can’t go on like this, so when the dust clears which choice will we make? Valueless money is just mammon. Belongs to Caesar, not to God (who is pennyless). Our nation is drowning in it. If We the People ever come to our senses, we’d realize there are way more of “us” than “them.” So I hope. Right now that’s pretty much all there is, and a great many others are hoping too…

Happy Halloween – Booga Booga!!!

Anything for a Vote by Joseph Cummins

We get a lot of insults these days when pundits, pontificators and political apologists for one side or the other toss accusations and innuendoes around like parade candy. If you disagree with Mister 22% (Bush) you’re a traitor. If you’re a soldier and you disagree with the way the war’s being managed, you’re a “phony soldier.” If you’re trying to get Democrats elected you’re “soft on terror,” and if you object to the shredding of the Constitution you’re “Islamofascist” or “feminazi” or just the standard commie pinko hippie scum. It just never seems to get old.

My 85-year old Mother, who watches Fox News religiously (I don’t know why) gets very upset lately whenever the subject of politics comes up among the brothers and sisters. Which is a shame, because we all love to talk politics, even if we don’t agree about everything. It wouldn’t be so bad if her blood pressure didn’t rise so visibly just before she goes into the O’Reilly rant about “hate, hate, hate!”

So I’ve decided the best thing I could do for her at this stage of her life (besides go spend some quality time just being with her, taking care of things for her, and listening to her stories) is buy her a copy of a new book by Joseph Cummins, entitled Anything for a Vote.

Cummins traces political campaign name-calling and insults through the entire history of our nation, from George Washington to G.W. Bush, with lots of juicy stops in between. If politics is too mean and nasty to talk about in polite company, that means it’s as American as Mom and Apple Pie! In other words, politics has always been thus.

In what Cummins calls “one of the top five dirtiest elections of all time” – Thomas Jefferson versus John Adams in 1800 – Jefferson’s hired political hack called Adams “a repulsive pedant,” a “gross hypocrite,” and, strangely enough, “a hideous hermaphroditical character who has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Whoa.

Not to be out-slimed, the Federalists attacked Jefferson right back in the most personal ways. “Jefferson is a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia Mulatto father.” A Connecticut paper mentioned the excesses of the French Revolution against Jefferson: “Are you prepared to see your dwellings in flames … female chastity violated, children writhing on the pike? Thomas Jefferson was just sure to bring the Reign of Terror to American shores! History, of course, demonstrates quite differently.

Which is the point of this book, and the point I think Mom needs to reconnect with if she can. It’s just hype and hyperbole. How the game is played, and if you care to participate in the process you sure shouldn’t be taking any of it too seriously. Other choice tidbits:

• Congressman Davy Crocket accused candidate Martin Van Buren in 1836 of wearing women’s underwear: “He is laced up in corsets!”

• Teddy Roosevelt got shot in the chest while preparing to make a campaign speech in 1912, but decided to deliver it anyway: “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a bull moose!” Very effective.

• Former President Harry S. Truman told voters in the 1960 campaign that “if you vote for Richard Nixon, you ought to go to hell!”

I figure it might give Mom a giggle, remind her of her love of politics, and reassure her that all is not lost just because politicians disparage each other and the people think they’re all crooks and liars. That’s traditional Americana raw, just as it is. Which is pretty much just what it’s always been.

The Democratic National Convention wrapped up last night with the most inspiring, detail-filled, well-delivered acceptance speech ever, and I can remember all the way back to Ike’s. Obama looked, as usual, cool and collected as he ran down the list of what needs doing, while hitting hard on the past 7+ years of failed leadership, insane paranoia of the American people, legalized torture, and their bid for a third term with Lt. Commander McMansions.

Presuming that readers wouldn’t have missed it for anything, the speech needs no quoting here. I’d just like to remind everyone that on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have A Dream speech, Barack Obama amply underlined his soaring rhetorical skills in front of 84,000 people in Mile High Stadium and millions worldwide. The Repuglicans are right to be afraid of him. The dream lives on, might even become a reality in November.

As if to attach yet another exclamation point to that piece of serious history, John McCain announced his Veep pick – it’s Alaska governor Sarah Palin. I know, I know. You’ve never heard of her, have you? She’s a real piece of work, probably chosen by McCain’s ‘handlers’ rather than he himself in a desperate bid for the PUMA plants, all dozen of ‘em having spent all week whining that the ‘Pug’s first opponent choice didn’t get the nomination. Who is this person, you ask? Well…

Palin is a 44-year old anti-choice Mom of five with a newborn son who has Downs Syndrome and another son soon being deployed to Iraq. That will probably work to blunt attacks on her wingnut positions, but she’s got another problem too. She is under current investigation by the Alaskan legislature’s Joint Legislative Council for abuse of power after she summarily fired Walt Monegan from his job as Public Safety Commissioner, apparently because he refused to fire Palin’s ex-brother in law Michael Wooten. Palin’s sister and Wooten had been through a “messy divorce,” and the Council is unanimous in its suspicion that the firing came as retribution.

Now that she’s the Veep nominee, though, we can all be reassured that the DOJ will probably move in to quash the investigation by late this afternoon. Here’s some juicy tidbits from a KTVA story dated Thursday [8-15] entitled Governor and staff’s latest explanations leave more questions. In the left hand sidebar are links to various documents pertinent to the investigation.

I suppose she’s lucky that John McCain has offered her another, better job just as this situation threatened to explode and end in her own summary firing by impeachment. Hahaha!!! Oh, my. Maybe there simply aren’t any honest Republicans to choose from. Sort of makes me feel a little sorry for McCain. This election is definitely not going to be close enough to steal.

George Bush lifted bans on offshore drilling, explaining that this will not only increase our domestic supplies, but will also remedy recent drastic increases in the price of imported oil. Now, oil companies already have more than 2,000 leases on offshore oil that they haven’t even begun to drill, and then there’s all the producing oil wells in Texas and Oklahoma that Ronald Reagan’s administration ordered capped (and labeled ‘reserve’) after taking office in 1981 (and which caused a rather drastic immediate recession in those states as well as contributing to the infamous S&L collapse. The very first bank to collapse – Penn Square Bank in 1982, was heavily invested in those producing wells when they were ordered shut down. That cost We the People $150 million. The current and ongoing bank failures will cost us a lot more.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports a Possible Industry Role in Energy Shortage, as Big Oil companies sought as long as five years ago to cut refinery output to increase profits. And cut back on new refineries is just what they’ve done.

But fear not! Bloomberg reports that Kuwait may build a refinery in Louisiana to help the US boost its capacity for refined petroleum products. As we fall further and further into deep recession/depression due to $5 a gallon diesel, $4 a gallon gasoline, and the fast-rising price of food, shelter and clothing based on that.

I probably don’t need to say it, but this is really bullshit. Bush/Cheney aren’t done robbing us blind yet? We’ve something MORE for them to steal before escaping to Paraguay? We’ve been set up for a fall, and now that we’re actually falling (with no sign of bottom yet), they expect us to clean up their mess with wealth we simply don’t have anymore? They looted our retirement funds. They screwed us on our mortgages. They blew everybody big time on WMDs in Iraq. And now… NOW we’re told…

…that the US oil industry is exporting a record 1.6 billion barrels a day of refined petroleum products, up a full 1/3 over last year.

Now, I realize that I’m not that smart about this sort of capitalistic crap-shoot, but it occurs to me that if the US had those 1.6 billion barrels a day of gasoline and diesel fuel we might not be falling off the economic cliff at an accelerating pace. And it occurs to me that we’re being told that the BushCo oil wars (now threatening to ignite the entire ME) are all about ’securing our supply’ – even though the truth is that our biggest foreign supplier is Canada, NOT Iraq, Iran, or even Saudi Arabia.

And with all this bruhaha about domestic supply – selling offshore and protected wilderness areas for drilling, capping producing wells, exporting a third of our domestic production – I’m wondering if the price of the oil they’re importing and charging us an arm and a leg for is LESS than what they receive on the world market for what they’re exporting.

I get the very strong feeling that they’ve screwed We the People yet again (that feeling just never goes away), seriously planning to turn us into just another Third World “Resource Region” for their total expoitation.

It’s their End Game. We have no choice but to play it.

“We will never forget, we will never hide, and we will never stop asking ourselves every morning what we must do to prevent what happened to ever repeat itself.”

So said Israeli President Shimon Peres at the main ceremony marking Holocaust Memorial Day at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned his audience that anti-semitism is on the rise across the world today, and that insidious forms of Holocaust denial were asserting themselves even in nations that have every reason to remember with circumspection what occurred in Europe 63 years ago.

Iran’s quixotic dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims the Holocaust is a “myth,” and hosted a revisionist Holocaust conference in 2006. Given that Israel and Iran are currently at a heightened state of tensions – complete with bravado from Hillary Clinton about “nuclear umbrellas” and US defense of Israel (which has plenty of its own nuclear weapons) – it’s worthwhile for those who weren’t born when this horror occurred to take a long, hard look at reality.

Yet in Britain, Muslims have joined in commemoration events, which is a step forward, at least for those Muslims who have chosen to participate in the modern world by immigrating to countries like Britain.

A documentary film entitled Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was released just two weeks ago purporting to examine the censorship and discrimination in American academia against biologists and other scientists who criticize the Neodarwinian model of biological evolution. The never-ending Evolution vs. Creationism debates aside, a disturbing focus of the film are images linking Darwinism to Eugenics, and Eugenics to the Holocaust. This has resulted in the explosion of a very strange form of Holocaust denial coming from the ranks of science and academia that is a bit shocking.

Despite the ebbs and flows of partisan politics and election campaigns and candidates who will say or do anything to get themselves elected to power, today is a very good day to stop for a moment and asses our overall sociopolitical situation. We are at war on two fronts (again), and the costs are now coming due in increasing poverty and rising prices for every necessity of life. Will we again stoop to blaming the poor? Will we once again single out the religious for persecution and ‘elimination’? Will we allow the so-called “intellectual elite” to deny the lessons of real history in order to justify a renewed eugenics aimed (as always) at those they see as ‘lesser’ humans?

That seems a serious question to me. The quadrennial international convention of the United Methodist Church meeting on this day in Fort Worth, Texas, issued a historic and detailed resolution deploring the legacy of eugenics in the 20th century, apologizing for Methodist support of eugenic policies in America in the first half of the 20th century, and warning about a resurgence of eugenics in the 21st century. They are the first Christian denomination to issue such a resolution and apology, in recognition of the Holocaust such policies were used to justify.

Perhaps someday we’ll see a similar resolution from some organization of influence in biological/evolutionary science apologizing for the corruption of Darwin’s theory that was used to justify forced sterilization and miscegenation laws in this country and in Europe, and which did in fact get further corrupted by Hitler in his quest for “racial purity.” That too would be a step forward after more than 6 decades. Denial is more than just a river in Egypt.

Links:

Marking annual Holocaust Memorial Day
Holocaust Memorial Day
Israel marks Holocaust Memorial Day
Eugenics Apologies

In the wake of China’s crackdown on civilians and Buddhist monks and priests in Tibet, its links to Myanmar’s military rulers and genocidal juntas in Sudan’s Darfur region, this year’s Olympic Torch Run is meeting with anti-PRC protests along its route. Protests last week in London and Paris turned violent and were met with crackdowns of their own. The flame arrived in San Francisco Wednesday morning, a city with the largest number of Chinese residents in the US, and it was met with protesters.

The Dalai Lama told reporters outside Tokyo on Wednesday that he supports China’s hosting of the Summer Olympic Games, but insisted no one has a right to tell protesters “to shut up.”

The torch run seems a particularly good target for protest of China’s dismal record on human rights. The run was invented for the 1936 games in Berlin by Carl Diem, leader of the German Olympic Committee as a favorable propaganda vehicle for Hitler’s Third Reich.

So don’t be fooled by right-wing denunciations of the ongoing protests as the torch makes its way across the globe. It is a spectacle that never occurred in ancient Greece, but was invented to serve Adolph Hitler and announce him to the world he was about to throw into massive, murderous turmoil with his dreams of conquest and hatred of ethnic minorities and Jews. Linking the torch run to its notorious beginnings is apropos as a vehicle of protest against China’s brutal policies and involvement in ethnic and religious violence across the globe.

REMINDER: Don’t forget, kiddies – This is Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, brought to you again this year by the David Horowitz Freedom Center!

What did they do to us, again? I forget…

 Two “Unknown” Iraqi Casualties

American Dead: 3,990

American Casualties: 40,229

Iraqi Dead: Unknown

Iraqi Casualties: Unknown

Cost to the US: $504,000,000,000.00