OK, Occam’s Razor would indicate that Barack Obama has a maternal great uncle (i.e., his mother’s mother’s brother), named Charles Payne (middle initial unclear) who served with the 355th Infantry that liberated one of the camps in the Buchenwald complex, despite previous concerns on that score.
It seems very unlikely that he would have a great uncle by that name, and that someone by that name would have had that service record, who also was an Obama political supporter, and he would put forth such a story, and that they are not the same person, despite the confusion about the middle initial. So, if we ignore the “Auschwitz” reference, and the fact that he calls his great uncle his uncle (understandable, given that he had no actual uncles, at least on his mother’s side), the story is accurate.
But it’s not that easy to ignore Auschwitz.
That’s because “Auschwitz” has become one of the most emotionally charged words in the English (well, OK, it’s not English–it’s German) language. It’s one of the most emotionally charged words in any language, for anyone who is aware of what happened there, and few educated people aren’t, regardless of their native language.
The word is significant in the context of the Obama campaign for two reasons.
First, because it has such emotional connotations, particularly for Jews, with whom Obama has had trouble closing the deal, it looks like he’s pandering to them. I’m not saying that he is, but it has that appearance.
Auschwitz was the site of the deliberate extermination of many of them (as well as Catholics, Gypsies, homosexuals, and others deemed “unworthy of life” by the National Socialists aka Nazis) and one might cynically think that an attempt to say that one of his family members was responsible for the liberation of the camp would give that constituency a warmer feeling for him, despite his many foreign policy advisors who clearly are not fans of the state of Israel (e.g., Zbig).
Buchenwald, on the other hand, while atrocious beyond normal human understanding, was merely a slave labor camp, and not historically abnormal in a time of war. The people who died there did so under the stress of work and disease, rather than as a deliberate attempt to wipe them off the planet. Which, of course, says much more about human nature and history than it does about the Nazis.
But beyond that, it is of concern because it reveals a profound ignorance of history and/or geography.
Anyone familiar with the history of World War II knows that Auschwitz (despite its Germanic name, which like Dansk to Danzig after the conquest in 1939, was a rename–the Polish name is Oswiecim), was in the occupied country of Poland, which before the war had hundreds of thousands of Jews, and after the war had…virtually none.
Furthermore, anyone familiar with that history knows that American troops never advanced past the River Elbe, in Germany, and that the Soviet forces advanced all the way across Poland and into eastern Germany, raping and pillaging as they went. Which is why there was an East Germany. Has Barack never heard of that “country,” which was a colony of the Soviet Union, of which his mother was not obviously unfond (to understate the issue)?
No one, in other words, familiar with that history, would imagine that an American soldier, under Patton, had contributed to the “liberation” (scare quotes because the Soviets never liberated anyone–they only enslaved them) of Auschwitz.
Obama didn’t know this. Nor, apparently, did anyone on his staff, since he had been spouting the same fable since 2002 and no one had bothered to correct him. Or if they had, they were ignored. I’m not sure which is worse.
Given his unfamiliarity with Jack Kennedy’s less-than-successful negotiations with Khrushchev, it makes one wonder what else he doesn’t know.
[Late evening update]
Some have taken issue of my characterization of Buchenwald as “merely a slave labor camp.”
This has to be taken in context. I’m not sure what part of “atrocious beyond human understanding” with regard to that camp the commenters don’t understand.
I wasn’t excusing it in any way. I was simply pointing out that in the historical context of war, in which civilians were generally enslaved or killed, and disposed of when they could no longer work, it was hardly abnormal. Auschwitz (and Treblinka, and Sobibor, and Chelmo, and Betzec, and Majdenek) were in a separate class, previously unknown, which gave rise to the term “genocide,” in which the intent was to wipe out an entire people. I’m sorry that some don’t get the point.
[Thursday morning update]
Well, I certainly seem to have stirred up a hornet’s nest among some. Let me pick up the remains of the straw men that were strewn around and kicked apart here overnight.
For the record, I did not say, or imply, that Buchenwald was a summer camp. I did not say, or imply, that the leftist Hitler’s crimes were a “drop in the bucket” compared to the leftist Stalin’s. I did not say, or imply, that working people to death is not murdering them. I did not say, or imply, that anyone’s death (including Anne Frank’s) was less tragic because it occurred at Bergen-Belsen than at Auschitz. I did not say, or imply, that I would “smile with satisfaction” if I were at Buchenwald instead of Auschwitz.
I’m not sure how to have a rational discussion with anyone nutty enough to have managed to infer any of the above from what I actually wrote.
Also, for the record, I am not now, and have never been a Republican, or (AFAIK) a “right winger,” unless by that phrase one means a classical liberal. As for “sitting down with my Jewish friends and discussing this,” I not only have Jewish friends, but Jewish relatives by blood, or perhaps I should say had, because they include many who doubtless died in both types of camps.
[Update a few minutes later]
One other straw man. I did not say, or imply, that because of this single incident Barack Obama was unfit to be president of the United States. But it is part, albeit a small one, of a much larger tapestry.
[One more update]
To the people in comments asking me what I meant by this, or why I wrote it, I don’t know how to better explain my points than I already have. If after having actually read it carefully, for comprehension, you still don’t get it, or willfully choose to misinterpret it, I can’t help you.
[Update again]
OK, I’ll make one attempt, for those who think that I am somehow “minimizing” what happened at Buchenwald. Perhaps they don’t understand the true meaning of the word “atrocious,” as in the phrase I used, “atrocious beyond human understanding.”
I wasn’t using it in perhaps a more popular (and trivial) sense as “that movie or meal was atrocious.” I was using it in its most literal sense, as in a place where actual atrocities occurred. The two words are related, you know?
[Update about 9:30]
If I change the phrase “merely a slave labor camp,” which is what seems to be generating such irrational fury and umbrage, to “not a site for the extermination of a people on an industrial scale,” will that mollify people? Probably not, but I’ll do it anyway.
[Afternoon update]
I’m wondering how much of the rampant insanity, straw mannery and outrage in comments would have been avoided had I merely omitted the word “merely”.
[Friday morning update]
I have one final (I hope) follow up post on this subject.
As I said, come back in a year.
Maybe you’ll reach a conclusion other than “everyone else except me is stupid and thin-skinned.”
Possibly, but unlikely. Anyway, it’s not “everyone else except me.” Many commenters clearly understood the actual point and intent of my post, even if you didn’t.
Like all blogging wingnuts (and our so-called president), you just don’t know when to stop digging the hole and instead, in your stubbornness, you dig it even deeper.
Please, continue to pursue this retarded and profoundly offensive line of inquiry. Please write letters to the editor to newspapers nationwide about how a Nazi slave labor camp is morally superior to a Nazi death camp.
I can’t think of any better way for you to help elect President Obama.
Many commenters clearly understood the actual point and intent of my post, even if you didn’t.
Could you please explain the “point and intent”, for those of us who are somewhat confused? Why did you write this?
The left only revised history to call Hitler a right winger because of the anti-semitism and his betrayal of Stalin.
BZZZT. Dude, read a book for a change. And not one by Jonah Goldberg. The left, both in America and around the world, was denouncing Hitler and Mussolini as right-wingers from the beginning. The left didn’t denounce Hitler as a right winger when he was supporting the fascists in Spain against the anarchists, socialists, communists, and republicans?
Then, of course, there is the rather inconvenient fact that Benito Mussolini, the inventor of the term “fascist” and the founder of the first Fascist Party, proclaimed fascism to be a right-wing philosophy, directly in conflict with the leftist ideologies of socialism, liberalism, and communism.
Really, if you take away the genocide and the racism and war mongering, just what was it about Hitler that you didn’t like?
You man, except for the defining features of his movement and rule?
Well, there was the fact that he and his economic advisors stated that business owners were the natural fuhrers in their workplaces, who had the natural right to the obedience of their employees, who, in turn, had a natural duty to obey their fuhrers.
Oh, and the close relationship between the Nazis and the industrialists. And the embrace of the old Prussian military. And the constant denunciatin and persecution of leftists, socialists, trad unionists, and liberals. And the harkening back to a mythical past. And the nationalism.
And, also, his oft-stated belief that human history is driven by conflict among national/racial groups, without regard to economic classes, and his denunciation of the leftist idea that history is driven by conflict among economic classes, without regard to national identity. Oh, and his deliberate effort to organize his party and society into national/race-based solidarity.
But, really, other than that, he sure was a doctrinaire leftist.
I think I understand the distinction you are making regarding the camps, although I disagree with it. But I don’t understand the connection between that distinction and Obama. I’ve read your original post quite a few times now and I still don’t understand it. Why do you think Senator Obama said “Auschwitz”, and not “Buchenwald”?
Could you please explain the “point and intent”, for those of us who are somewhat confused?
No, apparently I can’t.
I don’t understand the connection between that distinction and Obama. I’ve read your original post quite a few times now and I still don’t understand it. Why do you think Senator Obama said “Auschwitz”, and not “Buchenwald”?
I don’t know why he said Auschwitz instead of Buchenwald, but my theory is that a) he is historically ignorant of the history of the war, and used the most familiar name to most people who have heard of the Holocaust, but are not familiar with the details, and b) (though this is less likely, but possible) he chose a name that would ring more iconically with the Jewish base that he continues to court. I don’t know whether either of these are true, but a) seem pretty compelling, because he did it with is grandfather in the Iraq speech as well. And as I wrote, what concerns me is that not only does he not know the difference, but no one on his staff seems to know either. Though presumably they have finally learned it after this incident.
Dude, read a book for a change. And not one by Jonah Goldberg.
And the one by Jonah Goldberg is wrong because…? You’ve read it, and critiqued it?
there is the rather inconvenient fact that Benito Mussolini, the inventor of the term “fascist” and the founder of the first Fascist Party, proclaimed fascism to be a right-wing philosophy, directly in conflict with the leftist ideologies of socialism, liberalism, and communism.
No, he was a life-long socialist. And liberalism was not considered a “leftist” ideology at the time (and still isn’t in Europe), though his philosophy (as was socialism and communism) was certainly in conflict with it.
Sally:
“I see military service as an honor and a privilege. Obama doesn’t.”
You made this up.
“I acknowledge that I don’t see those who serve in the military as victims. But Obama does.”
You made this up.
“[H]e doesn’t know anybody who has served more recently.”
You made this up.
You are ascribing motives and thoughts to Obama based on nothing more than your own preconceptions and fantasies.
“I see military service as an honor and a privilege. Obama doesn’t.”
You made this up.
Go read his commencement speech from the other day. He talks about all kinds of service–except military service. It seemed quite revealing to me.
It’s good fun to watch the wingnuts self-immolate over this. Keep it up, nutcases! None Dare Call It Conspiracy!
Rand, I came late to this party but obviously too many partook of the Kool-Aid. I understood what you wrote and how you meant it. Obama’s
All I’m doing is pointing out that I didn’t write what so many, in their inability to comprehend clear English, seem to fantasize that I did.
And there it is. Again. It’s not Rand, its the rest of us. The same pathetic line he’s been using for years when he says something obnoxious or idiotic. “It wasn’t me, its the rest of you misunderstanding me.”
This is probably the dumbest thing you’ve said on your blog that I’ve read. You still have some way to go to equal some of your statements on sci.space.policy
Take a long look in the mirror, take a walk and take a few days off.
You need it. You used to be a credible person, you’ve been sinking to new depths since 2002.
“Granted that the XIXth century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the XXth century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the ‘right’, a Fascist century.” – Benito Mussolini. The founder of fascism. And inventor of the term “fascism.”
“It wasn’t me, its the rest of you misunderstanding me.”
Here we have a perfect example. I never wrote, or implied that.
I said that some seemed to have that problem (and that apparently includes, as usual, you). Many others had no problem at all understanding what I wrote.
But, hey, seriously, asking if I’ve read Jonah Goldberg’s book sure does go a long way to refuting the distinctions I pointed out between fascism and leftist ideology.
The fact that Mussolini chose to call his philosophy of the right doesn’t make it so. It was clearly socialist.
Leo, why are you so reluctant to concede that Obama doesn’t value military service and sees it as a burden? At least he doesn’t value it in the same way he values community organizing.
Why not own the position? It’s one shared by other Americans, it’s not exactly revolutionary. Maybe it’s a winning position for all I know.
Here’s what he said about why he didn’t serve:
“Obama, speaking to reporters aboard his plane Saturday, countered that the idea that he can’t speak on veterans’ issues because he didn’t serve in the military “makes no sense whatsoever.”
“I didn’t serve, as many people my age, because the Vietnam war was over by the time I was of draft age and we went to an all-volunteer Army. But obviously I revere our soldiers and want to make sure they are being treated with honor and respect,” he added.”
http://www.startribune.com/nation/19234469.html
At Wesleyan, he said the following:
“There are so many ways to serve and so much need at this defining moment in our history. You don’t have to be a community organizer or do something crazy like run for President. Right here at Wesleyan, many of you have already volunteered at local schools, contributed to United Way, and even started a program that brings fresh produce to needy families in the area. One hundred and sixty-four graduates of this school have joined the Peace Corps since 2001, and I?m especially proud that two of you are about to leave for my father?s homeland of Kenya to bring alternative sources of energy to impoverished areas.”
http://www.wfsb.com/news/16389467/detail.html
Nowhere in this speech to college grads, all of serving age, supposedly the best and the brightest among us, does Obama even come closing to suggesting that they might honor his call to arms by showing up at the nearest recruiting station. But they lucked out just like him, they don’t have to serve because it’s all-volunteer now. Obama can encourage them to volunteer for the Peace Corps, just not the Marine Corps. Same same right?
This sincere reverence he shows for military service, you find me the speech where that’s on display,
It was clearly socialist.
Yes, clearly. As you keep asserting. Without evidence. And in the face of the unquestioned factsd I put up above.
I’m going to go get my favorite Nazi quote now, to show you how moronic and historically ignorant you are.
Rand wrote:
“Go read his commencement speech from the other day. He talks about all kinds of service–except military service. It seemed quite revealing to me.”
Exactly my point. You, like Sally, believe you already know what Obama thinks, so you listen to him for moments when he “reveals” his true feeling which, you are totally certain, are concealed just beneath the surface. You are focused on an imaginary inner life that you’ve created for Obama, and nothing Obama does can change the fact that, in your view, he is concealing his true dastardly nature.
Many people in this thread have read this blog post and assumed they know what you “really think.” You have been accused of being a holocaust denier, of being intellectually dishonest, and generally being an awful person. They’ve ascribed to you thoughts and feelings that you don’t have.
And its a lie right? You aren’t a holocaust denier. You aren’t intellectually dishonest. You don’t have the thoughts and intentions that people believe they can divine from your writing. These people come to your website with a preconcieved notion of what they will find; they don’t grant you the benefit of an assumption of good faith.
Perhaps there is a lesson here. Perhaps when people assume someone is speaking in bad faith, as these commentors have done with you and as you have done with Obama, they are not very good at really hearing what is being said. Perhaps–this is just a thought–it is not all that helpful to assume you know what someone thinks before you hear what they have to say.
I said that some seemed to have that problem (and that apparently includes, as usual, you). Many others had no problem at all understanding what I wrote.
You said that “many” of us seem to have that problem. But nice try.
In that “some” people who read your blog don’t have that problem isn’t really surprising. A minority of your fans have always been pretty out there linguistically. The fact remains that time and time again you end up claiming that its the rest of us who can’t understand you and that you were perfectly clear.
You’re not. Haven’t been since… hmmm… probably around 2000/2001 actually.
Take a walk, feed the ducks, stop frigging posting and come back and actually parse some of you stuff before you realize what a complete idiot you are making yourself look with this.
Leo wrote: “Perhaps–this is just a thought–it is not all that helpful to assume you know what someone thinks before you hear what they have to say.”
I posted directly above what Obama has had to say about his own lack of military service and his exhortation to college graduates to service in any capacity except military service. I’m not trying to read his mind, I’m listening and reading his own statements.
You on the other hand are taking his plain words and telling us, oh he didn’t really mean it THAT way, you’re misinterpreting it, you’re fantasizing.
“Only the employer can decide. Many employers have for years had to call for the ‘master in the house.’ Now they are once again to be called the ‘master in the house.” – Adolf Hitler’s Chief Economic Theoritician, on unions.
Quite the socialist, eh?
nothing Obama does can change the fact that, in your view, he is concealing his true dastardly nature.
That is not my view.
I didn’t say that he has a “dastardly nature.” I just said that there’s no evidence that he values military service. He occasionally pays lip service to it when it is politically necessary, but I think that the fact that it’s the one kind of service that he left out of his commencement speech (no doubt inadvertently, because in his disinterest in the subject, it wouldn’t occur to him to include it) is significant. Had one of his staffers reviewed the speech and noticed the absence, they might have pointed out that he ought to include it, for political purposes, and he probably would have. But no one bothered, because like him, they don’t value military service either, just as they don’t (or didn’t) know where Auschwitz was, or who liberated it.
You said that “many” of us seem to have that problem.
OK, many. Many is not all.
Many is not all.
No and nor is it “some” – you can’t even keep your self straight in this thread.
As I said, get up from the computer, close the browser, walk away and don’t come back for a few days then read this thread in total.
If you still like what you read… well…
Yes, Hitler the well-known leftist.
If you’re going to drop nuggets of pure bullcrap like that, perhaps you shouldn’t talk about other people with sentences that begin like this: “I’m not sure how to have a rational discussion with anyone nutty enough…”
Yeah joe from lowell, then there was that whole Volkswagen or “peoples wagon” thing, the state run “daycare” and “athletic camps”. No socialism there.
No socialism there.
Yeah, the nerve of that Hitler guy, having a National Socialist German Workers Party, and all those social programs, giving socialism a bad name.
The only significant difference from communism was that Hitler’s socialism was national, instead of international.
To quote Rand Simberg: “Really, if you take away the genocide and the racism and war mongering, just what was it about Hitler that you didn’t like?”
There are many things that I didn’t like about Hitler, but there is another thing I didn’t like about him is that he’s a rightwing like you. You need to re-take the history because you’ve failed history. Badly.
By the way, in Japan, “Liberal Democratic Party” is a conservative political party. The title of the political party doesn’t mean anything to me. Everyone (beside from rightwingnuts) already know that National Socialist party is a conservative authoritarian-loving party.
There are many things that I didn’t like about Hitler, but there is another thing I didn’t like about him is that he’s a rightwing like you.
And what is it about me that’s “a rightwing”? And like Hitler?
The title of the political party doesn’t mean anything to me.
Well that’s pretty obvious.
Surely you meant to write something more intelligent than this?
It’s not “everyone” misunderstanding the original post, only dumb lefty Olbermann wannabes. Ignore the lefty trolls. They always hate it when people point out the fact that Hitler was a lefty.
You start from the assumption that he doesn’t value service, then find it incredibly “revealing” that he didn’t mention military service in one speech, despite his having mentioned in many others. That’s an assumption of bad faith. If I apply the same rules to you, judging the “merely” as an incredibly revealing tell and the surrounding material as just “political correctness” it would be pretty easy to conclude you are a Nazi apologist. But you aren’t a Nazi apologist, and Obama doesn’t distain military service.
Assuming someone is lying or concealing their true feelings is not a viable way to evalute arguments.
You start from the assumption that he doesn’t value service
No, I didn’t start with any assumptions. I am inferring that he doesn’t value military service because he has said that he didn’t serve because he didn’t have to, and it was the one form of service that he left out of his list of types of service in his advice to the graduates. If there is some evidence that he does value military service, I am open to seeing it (not that it would make me likely to vote for him).
And the notion that I’m a Nazi sympathizer certainly can’t be sanely inferred from anything I’ve written, here or elsewhere.
“Everyone (beside from rightwingnuts) already know that National Socialist party is a conservative authoritarian-loving party.”
As opposed to a liberal authoritarian-loving party? Many of his ideas WERE liberal at the time. Why do you think he was in those beer halls and not university campuses? He needed the WORKERS on his side.
Lift your head from the Kool-aid trough once in a while.
It’s pretty evident that our dear blog OP didn’t know jack about Buchenwald, and posted his drivel after scanning a couple of Google links. He then used the “atrocious beyond normal human understanding” line as a blanket disclaimer to be called upon if he were challenged.
Read a book or two, you idiot.
Oh, and grow a sense of morals.
Buchenwald was merely a work camp?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Buchenwald-J-Rouard-10.jpg
Yeah, I’d love to have spent the war in such a “work camp.” Give me a break.
It’s pretty evident that our dear blog OP didn’t know jack about Buchenwald, and posted his drivel after scanning a couple of Google links.
That is “evident” only to idiots.
These folks seem to think that there is a useful distinction between concentration camps and extermination camps. Go argue with them, moron.
And yet another straw man. The stuff must be on sale.
I’d love to have spent the war in such a “work camp.”
I didn’t say it was a “work camp.” I said it was a slave labor camp. You know, with slaves? Whose lives are of little or no value to the slaveholders?
And no one has said that one would want to spend a minute, let alone a war in one. What part of “atrocious beyond human understanding” do you and the some of the other illiterate morons here not understand?
Yeah joe from lowell, then there was that whole Volkswagen or “peoples wagon” thing, the state run “daycare” and “athletic camps”. No socialism there.
Nope. No socialism there.
Socialism: A theory or policy of social organization which advocates the ownership and control of the means of production, capital, land, property, etc. by the community as a whole.
What you mean in POPULISM, which comes in both left and right varieties.
BTW, the Russian Liberal Democratic Party is fiercely nationalist, anti-semitic, lauds Stalin, and denounces cosmopolitan elites.
Bill Marion takes the cake, though: Why do you think he was in those beer halls and not university campuses? He needed the WORKERS on his side. Ladies and gentleman, the Republicans are now the more-socialist party in American politics.
Libtards are so Orwellian in their logic. “We can’t argue facts so let’s just redefine the language!”
The only significant difference from communism was that Hitler’s socialism was national, instead of international.
No, not really. Did socialists insist that class conflict was artificial? Did they argue that the private owners of capital, land, and industry have the right not only to the ownership of those things, but to the government-enforced obedience of their workers?
Did socialists believe that political power was divinely granted to certain ubermen, who had the divine right to compel others to obey?
Why, no, they did not. In fact, they argued precisely the opposite of every one of those points.
Socialism, like Fascism, has an actual definition, and certain defining characteristics. “Bad stuff done by the government” is not, in fact, part of that definition.
The only significant difference from communism was that Hitler’s socialism was national, instead of international.
No, not really. Did socialists insist that class conflict was artificial? Did they argue that the private owners of capital, land, and industry have the right not only to the ownership of those things, but to the government-enforced obedience of their workers?
Did socialists believe that political power was divinely granted to certain ubermen, who had the divine right to compel others to obey?
Why, no, they did not. In fact, they argued precisely the opposite of every one of those points.
Socialism, like Fascism, has an actual definition, and certain defining characteristics. “Bad stuff done by the government” is not, in fact, part of that definition.
Leo, I think I get it. You think we should believe in the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. In religious terms, that would be called having faith. We must have faith that Obama is as good and as decent as we hope he is and ignore or minimize whatever information we might have to the contrary.
This is a strange approach to electing a President, the idea that we must attribute to Obama positions and ideals that he himself has never claimed while ignoring the ideas and values he HAS made known.
This is the true delusion.
Did socialists believe that political power was divinely granted to certain ubermen, who had the divine right to compel others to obey?
So the people in Josef Stalin’s (Man of Steel) Soviet Union (you know, the place called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) weren’t socialists? Who knew?
Fine. Great-uncle rather than uncle, and Buchenwald rather than Auschwitz.
This reveals a “profound ignorance of history” and is deeply disturbing to you?
Man, you’re really reaching. I’ve rarely seen anyone so overeager to be outraged.
So the people in Josef Stalin’s (Man of Steel) Soviet Union (you know, the place called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) weren’t socialists?
Yes, they were socialists. And that’s why the Soviets’ theory of political power was based not on a belief in Stalin having a divine right, but on the (alleged) support of the people/workers.
C’mon, you’re making this too easy for me.
I need to find me a higher order of wingnut to argue with.
Man, you’re really reaching. I’ve rarely seen anyone so overeager to be outraged.
I think it’s telling that the outrage hasn’t changed a bit, even as the supposed justification for it has changed.
First, he was outraged that Obama would make up a story about his uncle serving in the Army. Then, he was outraged that Barack Obama would pander. Then, he was outraged that Barack Obama would not know a great deal about World War II history.
You know the old saying about “With this much manure, there must be a pony in here somewhere?” This is precisely the opposite. With all of these ponies that keep turning up for Senator Obama, he just knows there’s gotta be some manure in there somewhere. And he’s going to keep pretending he smells it, no matter what turns up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
I think that link may be helpful to you.
Meanwhile, as long as we’re judging based on “inferences,” I’m going to draw the conclusion that you are a typically dishonest right-winger who saw an error about a German place name and took it as an opportunity to score cheap political points by minimizing the horrors of the holocaust. And I think the record will show that my evaluation was significantly more considered and fair minded than you deserve.
Man, you’re really reaching. I’ve rarely seen anyone so overeager to be outraged.
I’m not only not “overeager to be outraged,” but unlike the leftwingnuts who are visiting here (presumably from places like Balloon Juice, judging by referrals) I’m not outraged at all. Sorry, but I don’t consider what Obama did outrageous.
I’m going to draw the conclusion that you are a typically dishonest right-winger who saw an error about a German place name and took it as an opportunity to score cheap political points by minimizing the horrors of the holocaust.
You are free to draw whatever nutty conclusions you want–I certainly have no control over how your mind malfunctions. There is nothing in my post that minimizes the horrors of the holocaust, or apologizes for the Nazis. Perhaps you missed the part where I pointed out that the Jewish population of Poland was essentially wiped out completely?
C’mon people, why all the angst about Nazi extermination/death/labor camps. Don’t you know that Dunkin Donuts was trying to use Rachel Ray to push terrorist goals?
The utter stupidity of the far right is breathtaking. Having to chose between the left and the right is essentially a choice between dumb and exponentially dumber.
Eisenhower himself ordered US troops to see
camps like Buchenwald we liberated to steel themselves as they killed old German men and 15 year old kids in house to house fighting in the last months of the war.
He ordered German civilians to bury the dead in those camps so they could never say “We didn’t know.”
Denigrating what those soldiers and the survivors went through to try and score political points is disgusting. And sadly also par for the course with Republicans.
Rand: Your true feelings were shown by this sentance:
“Buchenwald . . . was merely a slave labor camp, and not historically abnormal in a time of war.”
I’d say that’s pretty revealing. It’s not surprising that you would say elsewhere things that contradict your deeply held belief that the holocaust was “not historically abnormal.” After all, you know that’s not a politically correct thing to say. But your true feelings are amply demonstrated by this quote.
Eisenhower himself ordered US troops to see
camps like Buchenwald we liberated to steel themselves as they killed old German men and 15 year old kids in house to house fighting in the last months of the war.
He ordered German civilians to bury the dead in those camps so they could never say “We didn’t know.”
Denigrating what those soldiers and the survivors went through to try and score political points is disgusting. And sadly also par for the course with Republicans.