The Right used to soil themselves whenever Democrats pointed out similarities between GOP strategies and those of the Nazis. With the Dems more-or-less in charge again, it’s the Tea-Partiers and other Republicans who can’t stop equating Democrats, Liberals and Progressives with a godless, leftist Hitler.

All spin aside, Hitler’s fundamental attitudes and behaviors demonstrate he would have been largely indistinguishable from most of today’s Tea-Bots.  Hear’s what I mean; Herr Hitler:

• *  shouted a lot;
• *  urged revolution against a traitorous government;
• *  ran with a violent, poorly-educated crowd;
• *  saw enemies of the country everywhere;
• *  hated liberals, communists, and socialists;
• *  hated feminists, too;
• *  and unions…
• *  blamed immigrants (especially Jewish and dark-skinned ones) for most of his country’s woes; 
• *  condemned homosexuals;
• *  was anti-abortion and anti-birth control; 
• *  despised multi-culturalism;
• *  considered civil rights an obstacle to social order;
• *  thought modern culture was Satan’s plot against society;
• *  was vehemently pro-war and pro-death penalty;
• *  opposed the super-rich while secretly relying on their support;
• *  promised a return to the former glory of his country, through violence if necessary;  
• *  regularly labeled himself and his country Christian, and invoked Christ and God in public.

What was that last bit, Adolf Hitler tight with the Lord? Wasn’t he the atheistic enemy of Jesus and religion?

See for yourself. The following quotes are lifted from various Hitler speeches, 1930-1943: 

“But there is something else I believe, that there is a God…And this God again has blessed our efforts.”

“If positive Christianity means love of one’s neighbor, i.e. the tending of the sick, the clothing of the poor, the feeding of the hungry, the giving of drink to those who are thirsty, then it is we who are the more positive Christians.”

“We must educate the youth in particular in the spirit of those of Christ’s words that we must interpret anew: love one another; be considerate of your fellow man; remember that each one of you is not alone a creature of God, but that you are all brothers!”

“My feelings as a Christian point me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter… I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… As a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.”

“We must turn…away from the anti-Christian, smug individualism of the past, from the egotism and stupid hypocrisy of personal arrogance.”

“We, therefore, go our way into the future with the deepest belief in God. Would all we have achieved been possible had God not helped us? I know that the fruits of human labor are hard-won and transitory if they are not blessed by the All-Powerful. Work such as ours, which has received the blessings of the Almighty, can never again be undone by mere mortals.”

“Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.”

“We have been conducting a fearless campaign against that…which is threatening our entire nation, our culture, our art, and our public morals.”

“We have made an end of denials of God and the tearing down of religion.”

 “I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty… I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”

“Once the mercy of God shined on us, but we were not worthy of His mercy. Providence withdrew its protection and our people fell… In this deep misery we again learned to pray.”

“The youth will, with loathing and contempt, abandon those hypocrites who have Christ on their lips but the Devil in their hearts.”

“God does not make cowardly nations free.”

“I would like to thank the Almighty for choosing me, of all people, to be allowed to wage this battle…”

“And so long as we are loyal, honest, and ready to fight, so long as we believe in our great work and do not capitulate, we shall also in the future have the blessing of God.”

“Our prayer is: Lord God, let us never hesitate, let us never play the coward, let us never forget the duty which we have taken upon us.”

“Lord, grant to our people peace at home, and grant and preserve to them peace from foreign enemies!”

“Even the Devil can appear as an Angel of Light”

Does Hitler sound like a godless Lefty to you? He speaks native Christian better than many of the Tea-Bigots themselves, doesn’t he? (I don’t want to consider the full implication of that)

On Mike Malloy’s radio show the other day, a caller asked why Rightwing women, like Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin, generally have such shrill, high-tension voices (which I call Bachmann-Palin Overdrive)?  

I was raised by fundamentalist Christians, and have noted, for years, the screechy voices of Rightwing females. I have a theory about where that comes from…

Religiously conservative girls are taught, from birth, to be subordinate to men in every way. They’re expected to be cute, infantile, demure, and otherwise non-threatening. In addition to standing, sitting and walking with certain affectations, they learn to keep their voices high up in the throat, so as to sound childlike and “feminine” for life (I remember the horrible taunting a couple of my female childhood friends had to endure because they just weren’t girly enough).

Bachmann and Palin, programmed like other conservative women, are unconsciously rebelling against rightwing males, imo. They’re ripshit at what they’ve been taught to be, and at the things they’ve had to do to rise in their world. At the same time, their conditioning prevents them from direct confrontation of the Rightwint male, creating major congnitive dissonance.

So they transfer their anger to those considered unequal to Rightwing males–like Obama–but can barely hear themselves over all that internal conflict. This pushes their vocal cords hard into overdrive–hence the nails-on-chalkboard tones.

Ann Coulter doesn’t suffer from Bachmann-Palin Overdrive because she’s really a man.

As reported by AZ Central.com for Politico:

Former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) said Sunday that the expansion of state laws allowing gay marriage could lead to people marrying horses.

Hayworth, during an interview with an Orlando, Fla., radio station explained: “You see, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, when it started this move toward same-sex marriage, actually defined marriage – now get this – it defined marriage as simply, ‘the establishment of intimacy.’”

“Now how dangerous is that?” asked Hayworth, who is challenging Sen. John McCain from the right in Arizona’s GOP Senate primary.

“I mean, I don’t mean to be absurd about it, but…I guess that would mean if you really had affection for your horse, I guess you could marry your horse.”

In typical Tea-Bigot fashion, Haworth is flat-out lying. The Massachusetts Supreme Court actually defined marriage as “the voluntary union of two persons as spouses, to the exclusion of all others”, not the horse-apples he quoted about. At any rate, you really have to wonder about a guy who thinks the only thing preventing humans from marrying their favorite animals is a law.

Haworth might be distressed to learn that in the five years since Massachusetts legalized gay marriage, it still retains the lowest divorce rate in the country, an achievement that dates back to 1940, if I’m not mistaken. And not a single case of a citizen marrying their horse (or any other of God’s creatures, either).

The Reverend Steven Anderson, pastor of the Faithful Word Baptist church in Tempe, AZ, has been doing a little ‘channeling’  in his Sunday sermons; you don’t need to listen too closely to hear the spirit of the Antichrist whispering in his ear.

[NOTE: The first Tea-Bigot to bring an automatic assault rifle to a Presidential appearance is a member of this Faithful Word Church, and was inspired to arm himself thusly by the sermons of this pastor--who also preached on the death of the President (a different story which shall be told at a different time)]

Here’s the good Rev now, spreading the love of Jesus:

“You wanna know who the biggest hypocrite in the world is? The biggest hypocrite in the world is the person who believes in the death penalty for murderers but not for homosexuals. Hypocrite! The same God who instituted the death penalty for murderers is the same God who instituted the death penalty for rapists and for homosexuals. Sodomites. Queers. That’s what the death penalty was instituted for. OK? That’s God. He hasn’t changed. ‘Oh, God doesn’t feel that way these days’ some say. Well God never felt anything about it…but he commanded and said they should be taken out and killed.

“Do you know why God wanted the Sodomites in the Old Testament to be killed? Do you know why every good king of Israel, the bible says, they got rid of the Sodomites in the land? You know, the good kings that came after the bad kings, who had allowed the Sodomites to infest their land? They had, uh, infiltrated…

“King Asa got the Sodomites out of the land. Jehosephat exterminated the Sodomites that were left from the days of his father Asa. Why? Because the Sodomites are infectuous [sic]. That’s why. Because they’re not reproducers, that goes without saying. They’re recruiters.

“How are they multiplying? Do you not see that they’re multiplying? Are you that blind? Have you noticed that there’s more than there were last year, and the year before, and the year before that? How are they multiplying? Here’s a biology lesson–they’re not reproducers, they’re recruiters! And you know who they’re after? Your children.

“Remember you dropped off your kids last week? That’s who they’re after. Remember, you drop them off and leave them with somebody all the time, you don’t know, whatsay you drop them off at some day care, drop them off at some school somewhere, you don’t know where they’re at…I’ll tell you where they’re at–they’re being recruited by the Sodomites. They’re being molested by the Sodomites. I could tell you so many stories about people that I know being molested and recruited by the Sodomites. They recruit through rape. They recruit through molestation. They recruit through violation. They are, uh, infecting our society. They are spreading their dis-ease…it’s not a physical disease, it’s a sin disease. It’s a wicked, filthy sin disease and it’s spreading on a rampage.

“Can’t you see that it’s spreading on a rampage? I mean, can you not see that? Can you not see that it’s just exploding in growth? Why? Because each Sodomite recruits far more than one other Sodomite. Because his whole life is about recruiting other Sodomites. His whole life is about violating and hurting people and molesting them. So how many Sodomites is one Sodomite going to produce?”

 
I think the only real question is who was the Sodomite that molested and recruited Reverend Steven? Though maybe we should also ask why members of the Reverend’s congregation drop their children off at unfamiliar places and leave them with people they don’t know or trust, and why they don’t know where they’re at or what they’re doing.?

My comments on a Progressive Politics Examiner piece about Sarah Palin’s $500 a plate dinner awhile back; go there and add your own:

“One correction to Karen Harpers’ piece: The Tea-Bigot trend didn’t begin with Libertarians, but with the Koch Brothers, Newt Gingrinch, Dick Armey, Genn Bleck, and other filthy-rich GOP capitalists. The “Party” got started on 20 Jan 2010, when it dawned on the Right that there really was a N—– in the White House!

“About Sarah… What she really is, over and above all these other things, is corrupt. She got richer as AK gov, and quit her term so she could cash in. Sure, she’s jerk-off fodder for the Right (who are turned on by 50-somethings that look like their moms), but more importantly, she embodies the values her fans cherish: lying, cheating, not paying her own way, getting power without earning it, using taxpayer $$ to enrich herself, avoiding any real tests of merit and character, and giving up when the going gets tough. People worship leaders in whom they can project themselves, and Sarah gives us a clear portrait of the average Tea-Bigot–a frightened liar & cheater who believes (s)he has no option but to steal from others.”

Tonight I spent some time on the website of  the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, NC. The pastor of this church gained a little notoriety last October by  sponsoring a Bible Burning  (because there are just too many perversions of the King James Bible loose in the world). His bonfire plans became a minor cause celebre for the burgeoning Birther/T-Bigot movement.

This is classic stuff; you couldn’t make it up:

Come celebrate Halloween by burning Satan’s bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT, Good News for Modern Man, The Evidence Bible, The Message Bible, The Green Bible, ect. These are perversions of God’s Word the King James Bible.

We will also be burning Satan’s music such as country, rap, rock, pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, southern gospel, contempory Christian, jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc.

We will also be burning Satan’s popular books written by heretics like Billy Graham, Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, John McArthur, James Dobson, Charles Swindoll, John Piper, Chuck Colson, Tony Evans, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swagart, Mark Driskol, Franklin Graham, Bill Bright, Tim Lahaye, Paula White, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn, Joyce Myers, Brian McLaren, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa, The Pope, Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Donald Miller, Shane Claiborne, Brennan Manning, William Young, etc.

God must not have liked the idea of the good Pastor burning all His Good Books, though, because He caused it to rain for 40 hours and 40 minutes and the burning never occured. According to the church, the event was still a great success for the Lord.

Amazing Grace Baptist Church’s website is full of mundane ugliness. Obama Hussein, death-to-homos, abortion = murder, music is sin kind of stuff. More interesting is the long legacy of barn-burner, old-timey preachin’ that this church celebrates. Turns out that behind the delusional religious messaging is a rich tradition–of con men, mostly. I listened to bits of  sermons and song by long-ago masters of religious oratory, men who knew how to squeeze a buck out of an empty wallet. Grace church especially likes this preacher–the Lord’s first real kung fu guy:

The website has dozens, maybe hundreds, of sermon sound files; the preacher rants often include bluegrassy tunes with cute lyrics about Satan and the Bible. There’s a handbook on how to get to hell (spoiler: do nothing, and trust yourself). Scattered across the site are little doctrinal gems like this one: “We believe that the Bible (KJV) is inspired by God. If it wasn’t inspired, it wouldn’t be God’s Word.”  Or my personal favorite: “A true scholar is one who believes the Bible (King James Version only) whether he understands it or not.”

In spite of myself, however, I can’t help feeling an affinity with this little fundamentalist church. We’re doing the Lord’s work by condemning so many of the same things:

• * all the goddamned bibles in the world
• * country music
• * Billy Graham
• * the Pope
• * soft and easy music
• * Tim LaHaye (Left Behind author)
• * James Dobson
• * pop music
• * southern gospel (I’m sorry, it depresses me)
• * Rick Warren
• * contempory Christian music
• * and most of all, that poison-spewing, monster-from-hell idiot box:

On her radio show, rightwing darling Dr Laura Schlesinger said that, to an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination (according to Leviticus 18:22) and cannot be condoned under any circumstances. The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, penned by James M. Kauffman, Ed.D. Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education, University of Virginia:

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination… End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God’s Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness – Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord – Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this? Are there ‘degrees’ of abomination?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle- room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them (Lev.24:10-16)? Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws (Lev. 20:14)?

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.

Your adoring fan,

James M. Kauffman, Ed.D. Professor Emeritus Dept. of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education

University of Virginia

…like the other? Was Hillary Clinton fishing for future conservative female votes when she described, on the 13th, Haiti’s earthquake disaster thusly: “It is biblical, the tragedy that continues to daunt/stalk Haiti and the Haitian people”? 

We probably wouldn’t have paid any attention to the ‘biblical’ thing (phrases like this have long been part of the American lexicon, and don’t necessarily mean anything) except that on the same day, the conservative bullhorn Drudge Report ran the headline “Biblical Damage” over its lead Haiti story, while on the 700 Club, doddering old rightwinger Pat Robertson blamed the earthquake on a fictitious Haitian deal with the devil.

As W might’ve said, looks like we hit the (religious reference) trifecta. So is it fair to ask what she meant by conflating the bible with Haiti? Was she implying that the earthquake, and other Haitian tragedies before it, were acts of God, or were so damaging because they were acts of God? Was she comparing Haiti to biblical ancient Egypt, tormented by a series of plagues? Does she think that God or the Devil has it in for the poor Haitians, and their children, and their children’s children (whom, according to the rest of her statement, we were just getting ready to finally help out of the economic hellhole they’ve been in for years)?  

In reality, the tragedy that struck Haiti is not biblical, but geological and economic. The island, part of the greater Antillean Archipelago, is situated at the juncture of three tectonic plates. These plates are each moving in different directions, and are simultaneously rubbing each other sideways, pushing under each other on one side and pushing over one another on the other; scientists have been measuring tension along these plates and predicting just such a disaster. And this tragedy is triply devastating due to Haiti’s lack of infrastructure and support services–a direct consequence of nearly a century of Western meddling with its government, economy and resources. Haiti was Latin America’s first country to achieve independence from Western occupation,  and the only former slave colony to achieve that independence through slave rebellion. The West has never forgotten this, and has been fucking with Haiti ever since. Hillary could more accurately have stated, “It’s capitalistic, the tragedy that continues to daunt Haiti and the Haitian people.” 

Compared to the destruction of human life in Haiti, this is arguably a petty matter, but Progressives should be paying attention to whether or not future candidates are pandering to America’s religious right. Hillary did it a lot in ‘08, even stirring up  Christian-related racial fears about Obama, and Punky predicts she’ll be doing a lot more of this in the next couple of years.

In any event, it’s less than ideal that in the 21st century, one of the most powerful leaders in the free world would invoke, even unintentionally,  superstitious/religious nonsense when commenting on human tragedy. Leave that to the T-Beggars.