Barnhart you have posted completely ignorant posts about me before, so why am I surprised about this one?

First I am an enrolled member of the Colville Confederated Tribes. Born and raised on an Indian Reservation and in fact live there now and serve Native American Entrepreneurs.

My nickname growing up (on the reservation) was the "Coyote" and that was primarily given me by the parents of some of my friends....Oh....Native American friends.

Oh and leave it to you to get lost in the irony and satire that is that series of images. Because only libruls are allowed to participate in biting satire.

The artwork that the Obamaphiles have adopted for those posters comes from the 1930's and was a part of fabric of the political culture of Europe.

Groucho Marx, a Jew, would pan and make jokes about Hitler."During a tour of Germany in 1958, Marx, accompanied by his then wife, Eden, his daughter, Judith and Robert Dwan, climbed a pile of rubble that marked the site of Adolf Hitler's bunker, the site of Hitler's death, and performed a two minute charleston.[4] Groucho Wiki

I know it is much easier to prescribe thoughts and deeds of evil nature to others as a matter of rhetorical hate.

However, unfortunately for you, there are hundreds of people who know me personally and know that your erroneous screed does not ring true as to who and what type of person I am.

It does however go a long way to say something about your ignorance.

yip yip

Actually, TA, if you look closely you'll see that the picture you identified as Al Sharpton is actually Reverand Jeremiah Wright, which explains why the tag line is "Damn" (as in Reverand Wright's most famous quote).

And, no, you can't accuse Coyote of racism and then use the "But they all look alike!" defense.

TA, Hey I decided to try to help you out and find that old post of yours where you took another absurd leap and attempted to prescribe (project?) thoughts and emotions to me.

I do notice that even here on this blog most people saw the humor in my post and thought you were, shall we say... to tightly wound?

TA's other hateful post.

Never heard of "Left Coaster."

Don't like the satire? Don't think it is funny? Think it is "lame?"

All valid arguments though some might disagree.

But the other accusations? Puhlease.

Well not please, because as I have said before, it is what you do. In fact I gave it a moonbat rule number.

Eric, rock on! that's right. Firesign Theatre. them was some folks what knew how to funny. it is brilliant.

OK, some of it is kind of funny.

But the Hitler/Yes-We-Can image? Not funny.

Coyote, could you please explain the funny in that one?

I see very few intelligent and honest debates about issues in the blog world, because this site (and others like it) is filled with people trying prove their superiority and righteousness over others. This is exactly what moderates like me get sick of from those on the left and right.

You mean I'm not superior and righteous?

I guess if I were a self-declared moderate I could run around and tell everyone that they weren't as good or as smart as they think they are..in an effort to elevate myself. But then I'd just be acting like a jackass.

How about the "You drew such a bad likeness, we can't tell who it's supposed to be" defense?

It wasn't a particularly bad likeness. It doesn't look a thing like Al Sharpton.

I thought the Nazi comparison was dumb (I would have at least translated it to "Ja Können Wir!" or something of the sort) as was the "Arab" panel, bugt then what do you expect from the kind of person who'd claim that Obama was an Arab?

Oh, and the OJ thing was simply racist.

Comedy is often about power. That's why some of the things Chris Rock says are hysterical while the same jokes would be shockingly racist coming out of Rush Limbaugh's mouth. Example:

You know the worst thing about niggas? Niggas always want credit for some shit they supposed to do. A nigga will brag about some shit a normal man just does. A nigga will say some shit like, "I take care of my kids." You're supposed to, you dumb motherfucker! What kind of ignorant shit is that? "I ain't never been to jail!" What do you want, a cookie?!

Rock's observation comes from a place of equal power with the object of his critique. He's black, so it carries none of the latent racist overtones the words themselves, ripped from the context of their speaker, naturally contain. If Limbaugh says the same words, they have an extra layer of meaning--they are laced with the political context of force. It recalls the 400 years of brutal suppression and puts Rush in that role. As a willing participant in a party linked with the Southern Strategy, Rush would rightly be charged with exploiting racism for political ends.

The Republican Party has not come to terms with its institutional racism of the past 50 years. In order to appropriate the South, Republicans have at the best capitulated to racist views, and at the worst participated in stoking them. Who forgets that in 2000, after he lost the SC primary, McCain apologized for his refusal to condemn the confederate flag (he called it "sacrifice of principle for personal ambition"). During the primary, McCain was willing to play with racist fire to win election. It was a de facto admission of the existence and potency of the GOP's Southern Strategy.

So into this we have Republicans mocking Obama by using black men who have been used to stoke the fires of racism: Rev Wright and OJ Simpson. Add to that the perverse use of misplaced racism ("Arab") against Obama, and this satire takes on an entirely unpleasant context. It is simply indefensible.

Coyote Ted, this is bald racism. I'd like to know how you would excuse or condemn it.

To come, somewhat, to Coyote's defense, this isn't exactly atypical of the right wing. They're not singling Barak Obama out for special racist treatment. They dress up all their opponents in this kind of fashion.

Clinton has been photoshopped as a Nazi. Carter too, if you can believe it. (Search"Carter Nazi" on google image search, if you don't believe me.) They also do them as Communists, never mind the absurd self contradiction.

This is really because the U.S. right wing, like all conservatives, don't understand the actual philosophies behind fascism and communism. They just hate those other people. People who are not like them. Not real Americans.

The conservative mindset is a primal, tribal, thing of ignorance, anger, hate, self invented lies, and fear. Not at all unlike what Adolph Hitler took advantage of, actually.

Don't cry for Ted, Argentina. I actually think that the Obama kids do have this romantinc/melodramativc streak which has caused some embarrasment at the margins:

The "seal" logo that wnet up and came back down pretty quick, the posters that Ted mocks, the Neo-Classical set for the acceptance speech and so on. However, it doesn't say "commie" to me; It says Wonk and Akward Outsider just a little bit.

As for the Coyote, his real focus has been to attack unions and ACORN and Mexicans (and yes I know about the friends and relatives of Latino descent) with a bunch of canned tripe that is false, poorly thought out and laughable. He lives in a world where evidence of voter fraud doesn't need to actually exist. It just needs to be possible to be factual.

Anyone who comments on his site is immediately rat packed by a bunch of Lord-of-the-Flies children, most named Anonymous, who endlessly recycle high midned critiques of "Moonbats", "Fucktards", "Libruls-that-hate-Murica", Idiots, and so on.

A 27%er site that will go down to it's death of old age muttering obscenties and referencing dark conspiracies. Like Creationist "scientists" they already know the "Truth" and spend their time aggregating support for that POV. Really not worth the effort..........

Elizabeth said:

Hmmm, so the pictures are gone from NW Republican. They were posted in the right-hand column of the blog for more than a month.

...

I am doubtful the collection of pictures documented by Barnhart were created by Coyote.

An admirer of the original poster by Shepard Fairey has apolitically collected a hundred variations on it at a tribute page. The collection includes pretty much all of the ones I saw the last time I visited NW Republican, and that TA reposted above.

Those particular images are largely the work of a site called The Peoples Cube, which has itself appropriated the iconography of Communism to produce a humor site for -- apparently -- people with an obsession about socialism and black people. The kind of people who think An American Carol is funny and that a completely red Rubik Cube with a hammer and sickle on the center of each face is stunningly brilliant social satire. Very prolific, and doubtless fairly profitable. According to their web site (and I have no idea if this is an actual quote) Ruch Limbaugh called them "The Stalinist version of The Onion." Although he probably put an exclamation point on it.

Blinded by your own erroneous stereotypes. See Moonbat Rule 1.0.

Elizabeth, the images are still there. I know it goes counter to your stereotype to leave them up. But reality tends to go counter to moonbat rule 1.0.

Pat, I don't think I have ever used the term "f-tard." Except one time that I when I attributed (and rightly so) the phrase to Carla. That was the first time I had ever heard it.

I know it runs counter to your erroneous stereotype that I do not use that phrase but reality tends to go counter to moonbat rule 1.0.

Then leave it to Jeff to assign "racism" to anything that is remotely critical of Barack Obama. Typical moonbat rule there as well. Just call a conservative a name and thus end the argument.

Hey, I'm Indian and proud of it. The fact that you dare criticize me must mean that you too are racist.

Thanks kids.

yip yip

Piccolo, as Jules said to the Brett as they shared a breakfast of tasty Big Kahuna burgers, "your ass ain't talkin' your way out of this shit".

Here is what you published on your website: Obama = Hitler.

Here is the mistake I made: Not watching hundreds of hours of Rev Wright on Faux News, CNN, etc — actually, watching zero hours because I don't own a tv. So I recognized neither his face (substituted one of the other popular evil black men in America, Al Sharpton) nor his signature line — just the racist caricature.

Here is the mistake you made: Publishing "Obama = Hitler".

Another mistake you made (sorry, I ran out of my own mistakes to list): Pretending that being an enrolled member of the Coquille insulates you from being called out on the illegitimacy of your publication, your nick, and your philosophy. (I was called "sweet little boy" for quite a while; no longer applicable.) Let's recall a few facts:

Indiginous American peoples: Victims of massive discrimination, theft of ancient lands, enslavement, denial of Constitutional rights and forms of persecution that add up to the practice, both inadvertent and goddamned determined, of genocide.

Hitler: Decided the genocide of Jews, gays, physically and mentally disabled, Communists, Romany and other "undesirables" was a good thing for the master race to pursue. Think he would have spared the Coquille?

In case we've lost the thread here: Ted Piccolo published the following information:

Obama = Hitler.

What I wrote: Saying that "Obama = Hitler" is a repellant act and demonstrates the quality of your character. Then I called you, in effect, a potty mouth. Only more so.

My words were a personal attack. I stand by them.

Your publication is hate speech. You stand by them.

(Sweet Jesus, apparently so does Jack Roberts. I guess he's done with both public office and having a good name to defend. That's too bad. No, on second thought, I guess it turns out to be a good thing. Because Jack gives no indication he sees anything wrong with saying that "Obama = Hitler".)

More goodies here.

Item from the news, Aug 27, 2008:

Plot to kill Barack Obama: Three 'white supremacists' arrested Three men with suspected links to white supremacist groups are in custody in Denver after being arrested with rifles and a telescopic sight amid fears of a plot to assassinate Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate. Mr Obama is due to become the first black candidate to accept the nomination of a major political party on Thursday, the final day of the Democratic Convention, at Invesco Field, an open air stadium that holds some 75,000 people. CBS4, a Denver radio station, reported that one of the suspects told authorities they were “going to shoot Obama from a high vantage point using a ... rifle ... sighted at 750 yards". When one of the suspects "was directly asked if they had come to Denver to kill Obama", a CBS4 source said, “he responded in the affirmative".

Item from the news, Oct 28, 2008:

US government agents say they have thwarted a plan by two conspirators to kill the White House front-runner and shoot or decapitate 102 black people. Daniel Cowart, 20, and Paul Schlesselman, 18, were arrested in Tennessee on Wednesday and charged with possession of firearms, threats against a presidential candidate running and conspiring to rob a gun store, the Department of Justice said. The plot is understood to centre on Tennessee where Martin Luther King was assassinated exactly 40 years ago.

Because, see, satire is just in good, clean fun. It's not like anyone takes this shit seriously. Just grins and giggles. So go ahead. Pretend that calling Obama "Hitler" is nothing but a joke and ignore the fact that Hitler is a god to the white supremacists and that they want to emulate his attempt to purify the master race and eradicate, enslave or deport the mongrels, wogs and other lesser beings.

Rock on, Piccolo. The more you talk, the better we get to know you.

Then leave it to Jeff to assign "racism" to anything that is remotely critical of Barack Obama.

But wait! I called it racism, too!

Putting a picture of OJ Simpson with the words "YES WE CAN" on it in an assemblage of Obama images is racist. There's no connection between Obama and OJ except the letter "O" and, uh, the color of their skin. That's a racist association.

The Rev. Wright image? Well, there is as association between Obama and Wright.

Putting a beret on Obama and labelling it "CHUMP"? That's an opinion. I don't find it funny like the Clinton "GROPE" image but then a lot of people like the dancing poop thing in "South Park" and I can't understand the appeal there, either.

"SOCIALISM" on an Obama image? Hell, people who regularly comment on this blog call me a socialist thinking it's some sort of put-down.

Putting a kaffiyeh on Obama and "ARAB" underneath? Well, in the context of someone who's slamming Obama, that's racist. Not against Obama particularly, but against Arabs.

The "MARXISM" one strikes me as pretty funny because it sort of undercuts the whole "Obama is an evil communist" concept. I mean, if you think about it (which I guess you haven't), you seem to be making implying that he's some sort of comedian. Or the guys at The Peoples Cube screwed up their Google search for an image of "Marx."

Pretend that calling Obama "Hitler" is nothing but a joke and ignore the fact that Hitler is a god to the white supremacists and that they want to emulate his attempt to purify the master race and eradicate, enslave or deport the mongrels, wogs and other lesser beings.

Dude. Mellow. The guy's a jerk, but the safest way to insulate Obama from attacks by white supremacists would be to convince them that he was Hitler, because white supremacists would so not want to kill Hitler.

That's probably been yip yip's secret plan all along.

darrel, most of this shit i'll let slide. but this is along the lines of the 2002 attacks on Max Cleland, where they morphed him into bin Laden. some things are not to be mellowed over.

the way to undo the white supes is to elect Obama president and work with him to make positive changes in the world. if you heard the piece on NPR last night, many of them are just waiting for things to fall to pieces so they can have their snowy revolution. what happens when Obama turns out to be a good president and takes the nation another few steps down the road to full equality, not just before the law but in people's hearts & minds?

what i object to at this point is Piccolo playing the fucking martyr. next thing i know he'll be crying about Wounded Knee as if the Army hadn't depended on people like him to find the injuns they wanted to attack. he wants to have his little bit of chickenshit fun and still be able to claim how mean the bad ol' lefties are. well, he's the one using Adolf fucking Hitler for christsake, and that's not a joke. ask someone who survived the Holocaust or had family who did not.

ta, And you move on the employ the ultimate in moonbattiness.

I never said Obama=Hitler. Actually you did.

I also never pretended to be a member of the Coquille Tribe. Again you wallow in your ignorance.

I know it is difficult to discuss things with your stereotype turned up so loud. However I am a member of the COLVILLE Tribe. But you already proved that you don't actually READ the arguments or comments of those you disagree with.

You simply look at headlines and pictures and then move on to apply your hate filled stereotypes to others.

It has really become par for the course for you folks. Anyone who is in the least bit critical of Obama must be labeled a RACIST. Scream it from the mountain tops. Stop all debate and dialogue.

Classy.

yip yip

Darrel and I agree! I agree with every word he wrote in his subsequent post, but since Coyote Ted has called me out, I'll respond, too:

Then leave it to Jeff to assign "racism" to anything that is remotely critical of Barack Obama. Typical moonbat rule there as well. Just call a conservative a name and thus end the argument.

I didn't assign the label to anything--I assigned it to three very specific examples. On reconsideration, I think Darrel's right that if the Wright image could conceivably exempted--though given the other racist images in that collage, maybe not.

Ted, you posted this stuff, the onus is on you. The GOP has gotten away with dog-whistle racism followed by "who me?" rebuttals for decades. No one's saying you can't criticize or satirize or mock Obama. The ability to laugh at ourselves and our own foibles is critical. But while I can cackle at the "Grope" image, you don't seem to be willing to acknowledge why the "Arab" and "OJ" images are racist. I'm not calling these things racist because they criticize Obama, I'm calling them racist because they plainly are.

Piccolo, i wrote you "published" -- you installed the image, you published. the image equates Obama & Hitler and you know it. i never said anything you being Coquille til you brought it up. and the more you try to pretend you are not publishing a rascist, hateful graphic on your website, the more deafening the silence.

however, you're doing a good job of imitating Faux News: ignoring what is being said and just saying "the liberals are being sooooooo mean to me." either take down the image & apologize for publishing something so offensive or admit you dig the idea and that's why you have it up: you think Hitler politics is fun.

Ted,

I can buy the "satire" explanation for all but the one portraying Obama as an Arab. That one is racist.

T.A., the only person who said Obama=Hitler was you. For the record, I disagree with your statement and hereby disavow you and repudiate you and urge that you be banished from this site for claiming Obama=Hitler.

If BlueOregon doesn't banish you from this site, it means they agree that Obama=Hitler and therefore anyone who keeps posting on BlueOregon is saying that it is alright to say Obama=Hitler.

Is this sounding stupid enough yet? Are you beginning to understand how wacky your illogic is?

If you don't think something is funny, fine. That's your right. If you think it's tasteless, that's okay, too. But for you to claim that you hare the final authority on what people mean and how people should respond to that what you think other peopl emean is juvenile.

By the way, I hope we are not in for 4 (or 8) years of people claiming that everytime someone disagrees with President Obama or criticizes his administration it means they are racist.

Moveon, the uber-powerful PAC that has bought and paid for the Democratic party, can run a national television ad during a war comparing the president to hitler

Luke, can you point us to a YouTube of that ad? I don't remember it.

T.A., the only person who said Obama=Hitler was you.

No, Jack. The graphic very clearly did that. It used a graphic motif that has become a recognizable symbol for Obama (the red/blue contrasty effect) as well as Obama's slogan (yes we can) and put a Hitler image on it.

It's pretty obvious what the intent was. And it's gross.

Jack, you're just sad. acting as an apologist for an idiot hate-monger, pretending not to see the message that is right there.

sad.

Come on, you guys aren't this dumb. The poster that has Hitler's face and below it says "Yes we can" is not equating Obama with Hitler. If anything, it is pointing out that the slogan "Yes we can" is a value-free, substance-free slogan. It can apply to anything--including the ugliest, most hateful ideology ever spawned.

Not the cleverest point ever made, but a legitimate point nonetheless.

By the way, I don't see either Barack or Michelle Obama playing into this victimization game. If anything, they've been dismissive of efforts to look for slights and insules where none were intended. I particularly remember Michelle Obama's unwillingness to take the bait when a reporter asked if she was offended when McCain referred to Obama as "that one".

You guys really need to chill out and follow the example of your candidate and his better half (can you say "better half" any more?).

Come on, you guys aren't this dumb. The poster that has Hitler's face and below it says "Yes we can" is not equating Obama with Hitler.

Riiiiight. Particularly not when it's done in the same style as the Obama poster, surrounded by other references to the Obama poster, and images with Obama's face on them and words like "SOCIALISM."

If anything, it is pointing out that the slogan "Yes we can" is a value-free, substance-free slogan. It can apply to anything--including the ugliest, most hateful ideology ever spawned.

Which means what, exactly, Jack? That the slogan used by Obama could have been used by Hitler (even though Hitler never used it)? That's an equivalence, Jack, i.e. something that corresponds with another thing in value. That's saying that there is something equal between Hitler and Obama.

Speaking of substance-free: "Country First" is just a variation on the "America First" slogan of the 1930s pro-Nazi, anti-war movement of Charles Lindbergh, isn't it?

Why do I get the feeling that this is all a a preface to fighting to bring back the "fairness doctrine," then applying it to the internet so that we can have censorship of all conservative opinion in the name of "fairness," then we'll build gulags to hold all the offenders . . .

Because you're paranoid?

Jeez, the Chinese and Saudis can't even manage to censor the internet -- how the hell is it going to happen here?

America first was an isolationist movement, not a pro-Nazi movement.

Lindbergh praised Hitler as a "great man" and planned to move his family to Berlin (after having left the "degenerate" United States in 1935) until he realized war was about to break out. Before he came back he received the Service Cross of the German Eagle from Herman Goering, and he helped the Germans organize the Luftwaffe. That's the guy the America First organization picked as a spokesman.

Lindbergh gave a speech in Des Moines to an AF gathering on September 11, 1941 that said American Jews were unpatriotic.

Father Coughlin, another AF spokeman, promoted the Protocols of Zion (republished by AF board member Henry Ford) and also raved against the Jews.

One of the America First figures, aviator Laura Ingalls, was actually in the pay of the Gestapo in the US before the war began and was sentenced to two years in prison for failure to register as a foreign agent.

Sure, there were many people involved with America First who weren't pro-Nazi, just like most of the German immigrants to America (my family included) didn't support the Kaiser in WWI or Hitler in WWII, but the top level of the organization was riddled with people who were Nazi sympathizers or simply shared many of the same prejudices, and the rank and file was certainly swelled by members of other organizations that (at least in the year or two prior to Pearl Harbor) who were anti-Semitic and pro-Fascist.

Whine about the "fairness doctrine" all you want, Jack. If you don't know your facts, you're just going to slapped down by reality over and over.

Jack, if you're bored of reading history, I'd suggest some credible historical fiction. Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America" is a fantastic novel, in which Lindbergh is elected President of the United States.

Ted, Pat Ryan didn't say you used the term fucktard, he said commenters @ NWRepublican did. The first place I ever saw it was on a lefty blog, so apparently it's pan-spectrum. Same blog commenters used the term Paultard to refer to Ron P's followers, which I thought a funnier term of abuse.

Jack R., criticism, even if wrong-headed, is not censorship. Ted Piccolo puts up an image equating Obama with Hitler. He gets called out. Being censored? No. You come back and defend the image, criticizing the critics. Are you censoring them? No. You compare critics to backers of Soviet tyranny. Censoring them? No. Ridiculous hyperbole that makes you look like an idiot? You betcha.

"America First" was not only a pro-Nazi movement, but it provided a political home to U.S. Nazi sympathizers. Denying that is equivalent to denying that Henry Wallace's Progressive Party in 1948 had lots of Communist Party supporters. Wallace wasn't a Communist (or a communist) and many of his supporters weren't either, but the CPUSA backed his candidacy. Likewise with the pro-Nazis in America First.

"Country First" invokes a simple if potentially jingoistic patriotism (and represents an interesting declension from "For God and Country," one might observe in passing). At the same time it also invokes a more troubling image of authoritarian right-wing nationalism that at the far end becomes fascism. In the real world it is not liberal or progressive cultural criticism, even if or when wrong-headed that points to actual political repression with gulag-like potential -- it is the apotheosis of "Homeland Security" (with its echoes of Heimland and less directly perhaps of Lebensraum, justfied back then in as necessary to the defense of the German nation) at the expense of the Fourth Amendment, the efforts to put presidential power exercised in the name of being "commander in chief" above the law, extraordinary rendition, other efforts at impunity and prevention of the revelation of official abuses.

Cultural images can have more than one meaning at a time. Pretty clearly this stuff started with an observation and mockery of the neo-social realist/socialist realist (but also more generally Art Deco) iconography of the Obama poster. It's a fine tradition. Check out the Depression Era artwork in the Post Office at Centralia Washington sometime, a visual paean to industry and its workers, across the street from the memorial to the American Legionnaires involved in the 1919 Centralia Massacre with the IWW (or at hundreds of post offices around the country). It's not just a totalitarian form. But it's close enough that the image of Obama in the Che Guevara beret posed as in the famous iconic poster pose is kind of funny -- though it took a minute to get that the s Chump caption was an alliteration joke on Che's name.

In a way, too, the Marxist image with Groucho might even represent an awareness by the critics that the accusations that Obama is any kind of a socialist (much less a Marxist) are joke.

But at the same time the whole array is intended to imply seriously that Obama is a socialist, a Nazi (an increasingly common rightwing conceit expressed e.g. in Jonah Goldberg's idiotic Liberal Fascism that seeks to deny the authoritarian side of conservative tradition including its most extreme practical manifestations by projecting it onto liberalism). In fact it is the context of conservatives making such ridiculous claims and assertions and seeking for propaganda purposes to collapse basic distinctions about the actual meaning of liberalism and why it is separate from either socialism or fascism that means that the Obama=Hitler image does mean that, even if it may also mean additional things as you suggest. It can does mean all of them at once. The academic critical jargon for this kind of multiple meaning is that the meaning is "overdetermined."

Further still, the fact that it is literally the flip side of the "joke" that Obama is a Groucho Marxist implies that the serious side of the coin is a resemblance to Hitler.

And just as not all members of America First were Nazi sympathizers, but some of them were, not all criticisms of Barack Obama are racist. Most of them are not, especially the official ones. Calling him a socialist is a dishonest lie, but not racist. Claiming that he "pals around with terrorists" is a dishonest lie, but not racist (at least not unless you build a series of images from his vague association with Bill Ayers as terrorist to Obama as Muslim=Arab, to Muslim/Arab=terrorist, which implicates the terrorist accusation in racist-xenophobic lies). Questioning his experience is not racist and is even a legitimate argument.

So not all criticisms of Barack Obama are racist. But some of them are, and the fact that some are not racist doesn't mean that the racist ones aren't racist.

Like Jeff, I also agree with Darrel.

One might even go so far as to say that "Country First" or "America First" has overtones of the first verse of "Das Deutschlandlied," which has been the German national anthem off and on for more than a century.

Even the Germans don't use the original first verse any more. You know, the one that starts "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" or "Germany, Germany above all" or -- in short form -- "Germany First." That kind of German exceptionalism got sort of a bad reputation for some reason.

Which was why I sort of had to laugh when I started seeing the McCain camp dragging out banners with a slogan reminiscent of an isolationist movement from the era when McCain was a young boy that had Nazi-sympathizer associations to boot. Or should I say, to jackboot?

Without the historical echoes, the phrase doesn't mean much. McCain's web site says "Country First: Reform. Prosperity. Peace." and "John McCain and Sarah Palin Will Always Put Our Country First." I don't see how the former are any less empty than Obama's slogans. As for the latter, it just seems to imply that someone other than McCain/Palin wouldn't put "Our Country First." Presumably Obama and Biden? So they're saying that an Obama administration wouldn't make America their first priority, yadda yadda yadda, they're working with the terrorists, the evil Muslims, blah blah blah....

I'm not a big fan of the "HOPE" express myself, and I was certainly vocal here in my dislike of the choice of Biden as a VP choice, but making a whole campaign out of calling the other guys un-American traitors seems like a pretty pathetic move on McCain's part to me.

Jeez, the Chinese and Saudis can't even manage to censor the internet -- how the hell is it going to happen here?

By putting Jack Bogdanski in charge of it, maybe. :-)

Jack, if you're bored of reading history, I'd suggest some credible historical fiction. Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America" is a fantastic novel, in which Lindbergh is elected President of the United States.

I have read it, Kari. And it is, as you say, fiction.

To call America First pro-Nazi reminds me of conservatives who insist Henry Wallace's Progressive Party in 1948 was a Communist front. There were pro-Nazi elements involoved with America First just as their were communist party members and communist sympathizers involved with the Progressive Party, but it is a slander to a lot of loyal, well-intentioned people in both movements to smear them as pro-Nazi or pro-Communist.

There were pro-Nazi elements involoved with America First just as their were communist party members and communist sympathizers involved with the Progressive Party,

Actually, the difference is that the Progressive Party of 1948 wasn't being led by members of the Communist Party, nor were the traditional allies of the United States at war with a country run by the Communist Party, which was the case with France and Great Britain at the time the America First organization was operating in 1940 and 1941.

<h2>Not that that stopped people like Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, and most of the bipartisan political establishment from casting progressives as traitors and un-American at the time, or stopped their descendants like Sarah Palin and John McCain from using the same playbook now, sixty years later.</h2>