Tag Archives: Hitler

national news, political news

Huck stands by his fiery rhetoric … shocking!

Mike Huckabee could have used all kinds of strong language to condemn the nuclear arms deal hammered out by the United States and five world powers that seek to prevent Iran from developing an atomic bomb.

He didn’t. He instead decided to go all the way. He drew a direct comparison between President Barack Obama and the Nazi tyrant Adolf Hitler.

Huckabee, one of the herd of Republicans running for president, said the nuclear deal will walk Israel “to the door of the oven.”

It was a direct reference to the Holocaust, the most heinous of the many heinous deeds authorized by Hitler.

Did Huckabee back down? Oh, no. He went full throttle forward. He stands by his use of that hideous language.

Huckabee chose instead to offer up a sound bite that will stand for a lot longer than the usual stuff that pours out of candidates’ mouths at election time.

This is what we can expect. Offensive sound bites.

It has worked for Donald Trump, yes? Well, Huck thinks it can work for him, too.

International news

Call it what it was: genocide

My friend Butler Cain has posted a blog about a recent visit he made to Armenia, where citizens are marking the 100th anniversary of what historians have determined to be genocide.

Turkey fought on the losing side of World War I, along with Germany. In the process of losing that war, it engaged in the brutal slaughter of more than 1 million Armenians.

The Turks have refused in the century since to call what they did an act of genocide.

http://butlercain.com/2015/04/25/armenians-in-singapore/

Others have used that language to describe the systematic extermination of people of a certain ethnic background, which by definition is what you call genocide.

One of the voices that so far has been silent on this matter has been the United States, which also hasn’t called it genocide. Again, by my way of looking at it, the Turks did that very thing.

Why the U.S. reluctance? Turkey is an ally of ours. It’s standing with us — more or less — in the fight against the Islamic State. Do we want to offend our allies by suggesting that its forebears did something so unconscionable that they might withdraw their support for our effort to eradicate the Islamic State?

That well might be the calculation.

Let’s call it what it was. Genocide.

Hitler tried it in World War II in search of his “final solution,” which meant the extermination of Jews; Pol Pot sought to eliminate his fellow Cambodians during the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror in the 1970s; Rwandans engaged in genocide in the 1990s against their own people as well.

History knows what happened in those instances. We have put the proper name on these evil acts.

It’s time to do the same thing while describing what happened to Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire.

 

International news

Auschwitz liberation turns 70

This still-new year has just welcomed the first of many 70-year anniversaries, most of which are related to the Second World War.

It was 70 years ago this week that the Red Army, which was storming across eastern Europe on its way to Berlin, liberated the Auschwitz death camp, where the Nazi monsters exterminated thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, while pursuing what Adolf Hitler called “the final solution.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11368740/Holocaust-Memorial-Day-remembering-horror-of-Auschwitz-70-years-on.html

Other death camps would be liberated by the Soviets — and by American, British and Allied forces rolling toward Berlin from the west. They would uncover horrors never imagined.

The world will spend a good bit of time this year looking back on the final chapter of the world’s most destructive conflict.

Seventy years ago this year:

* Hitler died, taking his own life to avoid being captured by the Soviet army. Good riddance to that hideous monster.

* Franklin D. Roosevelt died. For many Americans alive at the time, he was the only president they knew. He helped rescue the nation from the depths of depression and then led it into battle against tyranny.

* The Manhattan Project brought us the atomic bomb, which FDR’s successor, President Truman, ordered dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We’ll have much more to say about that at a later time.

* The Allies declared Victory in Europe, and the world celebrated VE Day, as Nazi Germany surrendered.

* The Japanese surrendered later and General of the Army Douglas MacArthur accepted their surrender aboard the USS Missouri.

* The United Nations was founded in San Francisco.

Nineteen forty-five was a monumental year, yes?

World War II ended and the world began picking up the pieces of its shattered existence.

political news, State news

Let's quit the Hitler references

Randy Weber is making a strong case for the title of looniest Texas member of Congress.

The right-wing Republican who represents Southeast Texas — where I used to live — has gone overboard in criticizing President Obama for his absence from the massive Paris “unity rally” the other day.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/13/randy-weber-obama-hitler-parsi_n_6460280.html

The GOP nimrod posted on Twitter that Adolph Hitler bothered to go to Paris for the wrong reasons, while the president didn’t go “for the right reason.”

Good bleeping grief, dude.

Hitler went to Paris in 1940 to declare victory over the French during World War II. And this episode has reached some sort of moral equivalency? Give me a break.

I’ve criticized the president for failing to attend, or for the absence of a high-level, high-profile American official at the event; the U.S. ambassador to France did attend. And the White House did offer an unusual admission that it erred by not sending, say, the secretary of state to the enormous rally.

To compare the president of the United States to the 20th century’s most hideous dictator?

Keep your mouth shut, congressman.

 

local news, political news, State news

A new Holocaust … in Texas?

West Texas’s newest state senator might be forgiven for being quite excited about his new elected office.

Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, however, did put a disgraceful twist on what he called the spiritual struggle he says is occurring today in these United States.

He sought to compare it to — get ready for it — the Holocaust.

http://www.texasobserver.org/new-senator-charles-perry-living-holocaust-ii/

Yeah, that Holocaust. The one that killed 6 million Jews in Europe. The on-going event that destroyed families and was perpetrated by the 20th century’s most monstrous tyrant in an effort to exterminate an entire religious community.

I’m not at all sure what the new senator is trying to suggest, but drawing any comparison to what’s happening today to what occurred during Europe’s darkest time in the previous century is, shall we say, more than a stretch.

Perry won a special election after Bob Duncan left the Senate to become chancellor of the Texas Tech University System. Duncan, also a Republican, routinely was rated by observers as being among the Legislature’s most effective members. Texas Monthly routinely honored Duncan by placing him on its “Best Legislators” list.

Something tells me that Perry isn’t likely to join that list any time soon, if at all.

Here’s a taste of what he said after taking his oath:

“There were 10,000 people that were paraded into a medical office under the guise of a physical. As they stood with their back against the wall, they were executed with a bullet through the throat. Before they left, 10,000 people met their fate that way.”

Here’s more:

“Is it not the same than when our government continues to perpetuate laws that lead citizens away from God? The only difference is that the fraud of the Germans was more immediate and whereas the fraud of today’s government will not be exposed until the final days and will have eternal-lasting effects.”

This is like the Holocaust? Nope.