Obama and Hitler — You’d have to be a madman not to see that Barack Obama is incredibly similar to Hitler.

Jon Stewart satirizes Republican Hate-Mongering

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Discussing the possibility of Sen. Hillary Clinton becoming the secretary of state in President-elect Barack Obama’s administration on the November 14 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, MSNBC political analyst Michelle Bernard asserted: “If she’s secretary of state, she will run a parallel government. It will be a huge problem.” Additionally, Jennifer Donahue, political director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, asked: “Will she [Clinton] be laying out the groundwork should Obama have only one term? Will she be, in fact, trying to create only one term for Barack Obama?”

During the program, Bernard also said Clinton “could give him [Obama] some cover, and she could also walk — go around the world acting as if she is not the secretary of state but the United States — the president of the United States. That’s a huge danger for him. It’s a very, very high-level job.” Host Chris Matthews then asked Donahue, “[W]ould you trust her to be a loyal subordinate, or believe she would be a bit too aggressive as a colleague?” Donahue responded:

DONAHUE: Well, let’s take past as prologue. I mean, how did she handle herself during the nominating fight? How did she handle it when Obama was coming up upon her and then lapped her?

She didn’t handle it very kindly.

She didn’t allow him to have his piece. She went negative. She tried to bury him.

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And I think that he should take a lesson from that. I mean, I understand this idea of hug your friends tight, hug your enemies tighter. I think that’s often true. If you look at it, you and I were talking about [Nicolò] Machiavelli and The Prince. Absolutely true stuff in there. And I think it’s smart to do it.

But what will she do overseas?

Will she be laying out the groundwork should Obama have only one term? Will she be, in fact, trying to create only one term for Barack Obama? — [MORE]

References:

1. Bill Clinton could pose Cabinet problem — Former President Bill Clinton’s international business dealings, global foundation and penchant for going off script could present a significant obstacle to Hillary Clinton becoming secretary of state, observers say.

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The Guantanamo Bay prison is a reviled symbol of America’s arrogance and disrespect for the Geneva conventions and other international laws. In the name of fighting terrorism the Bush administration has violated the sovereignty of foreign countries, tortured suspected terrorists, denied prisoners habeas corpus and violated the privacy of Americans.

Barack Obama realizes that symbols are very important, and he has made it his priority to close down the notorious prison camp.

The Statue of Liberty is an important symbol that speaks volumes about the generosity of America in opening its arms to foreigners seeking freedom. The Guantanamo Bay is a hated symbol that speaks volumes about the xenophobia of the Bush administration. We should take down all symbols that paint a false portrait of our great democracy.

“President-elect Obama’s advisers are crafting plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and prosecute terrorism suspects in the U.S., a plan that the Bush administration said Monday was easier said than done.

Under the plan being crafted inside Obama’s camp, some detainees would be released and others would be charged in U.S. courts, where they would receive constitutional rights and open trials.” — MATT APUZZO and LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writers

Bush tried to establish democracy in Iraq, an utterly impossible mission in a country with no history of democracy and no taste for it. At the same time he made a mockery of democracy by denying the suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay the most basic human rights.

Maybe developing countries wouldn’t have such a poor opinion of democracy, if we set a good example and treat everyone, even suspected terrorists, as human beings who are entitled to protection under the Geneva conventions.

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| More About The Detention Camp |

Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is located on the shore of Guantánamo Bay at the southeastern end of Cuba and has been used by the United States Navy for more than a century. It is the oldest overseas U.S. Navy Base, and the only one in a country with which the United States does not have diplomatic relations.[1] The Cuban government opposes the presence of the naval base, claiming that the lease is invalid under international law. The US government claims that the lease is valid. — [MORE]

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GILA BEND, Ariz. — Soon after Antonio Torres, a husky 19-year-old farmworker, suffered catastrophic injuries in a car accident last June, a Phoenix hospital began making plans for his repatriation to Mexico.

Mr. Torres was comatose and connected to a ventilator. He was also a legal immigrant whose family lives and works in the purple alfalfa fields of this southwestern town. But he was uninsured. So the hospital disregarded the strenuous objections of his grief-stricken parents and sent Mr. Torres on a four-hour journey over the California border into Mexicali.

For days, Mr. Torres languished in a busy emergency room there, but his parents, Jesús and Gloria Torres, were not about to give up on him. Although many uninsured immigrants have been repatriated by American hospitals, few have seen their journey take the U-turn that the Torreses engineered for their son. They found a hospital in California willing to treat him, loaded him into a donated ambulance and drove him back into the United States as a potentially deadly infection raged through his system.

By summer’s end, despite the grimmest of prognoses from the hospital in Phoenix, Mr. Torres had not only survived but thrived. Newly discharged from rehabilitation in California, he was haltingly walking, talking and, hoisting his cane to his shoulder like a rifle, performing a silent, comic, effortful imitation of a marching soldier.

“In Arizona, apparently, they see us as beasts of burden that can be dumped back over the border when we have outlived our usefulness,” the elder Mr. Torres, who is 47, said in Spanish. “But we outwitted them. We were not going to let our son die. And look at him now!” — [READ MORE]

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MILTON, Fla. — Three months after the local police inspected more than a dozen businesses searching for illegal immigrants using stolen Social Security numbers, this community in the Florida Panhandle has become more “law-abiding, emptier and whiter.”

Many of the Hispanic immigrants who came in 2004 to help rebuild after Hurricane Ivan have either fled or gone into hiding. Churches with services in Spanish are half-empty. Businesses are struggling to find workers. And for Hispanic citizens with roots here — the foremen and entrepreneurs who received visits from the police — the losses are especially profound.

“It was very hard because the community is very small, and to see people who came to eat here all the time then come and close the business,” said Geronimo Barragan, who owns two branches of La Hacienda, Mexican restaurants where the police arrested 10 employees. — [MORE]

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Behind The Veil: America’s Anti-Immigration Network — Video details the common origins of many of the country’s leading anti-immigration groups and their ties to White supremacists.

Lou Dobbs and Codewords Of Hate — A study by the Anti-Defamation League on the use of hate rhetoric in the immigration debate

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Sarah Palin is a strikingly beautiful woman, but her campaign rhetoric was ugly and frightening. With a smile and a wink she got away with uttering the most vile, contemptible and baseless accusations against Barack Obama.

Many times I would listen to Palin speak, and smile at her hokey charm. It wasn’t until a few moments later that I would think: Wow, she just called Obama a socialist who pals around with terrorists.

Sarah Palin is perceived by the press and most thinking Americans as a harmless intellectual lightweight, but her ill-chosen words are destructive. Palin is a very dangerous demagogue, and the GOP is playing with fire if they seriously consider her as a future presidential candidate.

“Sarah Palin’s attacks on Barack Obama’s patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign.

The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling ‘terrorist‘ and ‘kill him‘ until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.

But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.

The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin’s attacks.

Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: ‘Why would they try to make people hate us?’” — [MORE]

Palin’s over-the-top attacks on Obama could very well have inspired some of her more crazy fans to kill Obama. Yes, Palin is beautiful and charming, but what comes out of her mouth is ugly and dangerous.

Now that the McCain/Palin obituaries are being written, thinking conservatives should condemn Palin’s hateful speech. There should be no place in a presidential campaign for groundless vicious attacks.

Popularity: 2% [?]