How Quickly They Forget...

With the Republicans continuing their rapid attacks on President Obama and his attempts to change the health care system in our country, it is obvious that they are once again suffering from their very own form of selective amnesia. Apparently those individuals have erased from their mind the fact that the Bush administration allocated $950 million to establish universal health care for the citizens of Iraq. Yes, you read that correctly. In fact, Article 30, Section 1 of the Iraqi Constitution (which the United States assisted in drafting) declares that "The State shall guarantee to the individual and the family - especially children and women - social and health security, the basic requirements for living a free and decent life".

In defense of the U.S. funded health care for all Iraqi citizens, Tommy Thompson,the former Secretary of Health and Human Services, stated in March 2004 that "Even if you don't have health insurance, you are still taken care of in America. That certainly could be defined as universal coverage." I guess that all depends on which hospital you go to, as this recent article shows: http://www.app.com/article/20090823/NEWS/90823012/-1/FRONTTABS01/N.J.+hospital+accused+of+diverting+uninsured++Medicaid+patients+to+other+hospitals. With that being said, I am not surprised by Thompson's ridiculous comments. This is the same individual who, during a presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in May 2007, provided the following response to a question regarding whether or not a private company opposed to homosexuality should have the right to terminate a gay employee: "I think that is left up to the individual business. I really sincerely believe that that is an issue that business people have got to make their own determination as to whether or not they should be." The next morning, Thompson called into "American Morning" on CNN and backpedaled: "I made a mistake. I misinterpreted the question. I thought that I answered it yes when I should have answered it no. I didn't hear, I didn't hear the question properly and I apologize. It's not my position. There should be no discrimination in the workplace and I have never believed that."

If that wasn't enough, when addressing a conference organized by the Religious Action Center (RAC) of Reform Judaism in April 2007, Thompson referred to his lucrative transition from public service to the private sector by uttering "You know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition and I do not find anything wrong with that". After the conclusion of his speech, Thompson was reportedly pulled aside privately by the Director of the RAC, Rabbi David Saperstein, and then returned to the podium to issue the following remarks: "I just want to clarify something because I didn't by any means want to infer or imply anything about Jews and finances and things. What I was referring to, ladies and gentlemen, is the accomplishments of the Jewish religion. You've been outstanding business people and I compliment you for that." When speaking to a reporter from POLITICO.com, Thompson blamed his insensitive comments on the fact that he "was tired".

This Wonderful Day in History

On August 19, 1946, William Jefferson Blythe III was born at the Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, AR. Blythe's father, a traveling salesperson, died in an automobile accident three months before Blythe was born and Blythe's now widowed mother eventually remarried four years later. And although Blythe was not formally adopted by his mother's second husband, he officially took his current surname at the age of fourteen as a kind gesture towards his stepfather. That last name? Clinton. Fast forward thirty-one years later, William Jefferson Clinton was thankfully elected as the 42nd President of the United States. Enough said.

The Truth Is Just a Minor Inconvenience

In a question regarding the so-called "grassroots" movement in opposition to President Obama's health care plan, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) replied last week by stating "I think they're AstroTurf. You be the judge -- carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care." Well, on Thursday, the blowhard known as Rush Limbaugh provided these comments on his radio show: "The Speaker of the House accusing people of showing up at these town hall meetings of wearing swastikas -- that is not insignificant, folks. This woman is deranged. They are unraveling but that is not insignificant. You have the Democrat Speaker of the House saying that people, citizens who are concerned about health care, are now wearing swastikas. She's basically saying that we are Nazis. She is saying that the people who oppose this are Nazis."

First of all, you pathetic windbag, Pelosi did not imply that your fellow conservatives were "wearing" swastikas, only carrying signs containing those symbols. (This is in addition to posters of President Obama with an Adolf Hitler mustache and hanging dummies of Democratic members of Congress in effigy.) Second, there is not one mention of or any comparison to the word Nazi in Pelosi's entire statement. I can read it back to you, Rush, if you would like. (I would like to reiterate that I am not a big fan of Pelosi so sticking up for her is not one of my favorite things to do.) But just when you thought that Limbaugh might have been finished with his incorrect and offensive ramblings, unfortunately he continued:

• "This party, the Democrat Party and where it's taken this country, the radical left leadership of this party bears much more resemblance to Nazi policies than anything we on the right believe in at all."
• "You will find that the Obama health care logo is damn close to a Nazi swastika logo."
• "There are far more similarities between Nancy Pelosi and Adolf Hitler than between these people showing up at town halls to protest a Hitler like policy that's being heralded by a Hitler like logo." As before, Pelosi made no mention of Adolf Hitler or Nazis in her comments.
• "You want to start talking, Ms. Pelosi, about ties to the Nazis? Let's focus on your party and some of the greatest heroes in your party that you hold up. And let's look at your policies, Ms. Pelosi. Your policies come dangerously close to some of those policies that Hitler forced on the German people. This is outrageous stuff for her to be running around saying these are unruly mobs with swastikas."
• "Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate. His cabinet only met once, one day. That was it." This is a tremendous point by Limbaugh, considering the fact that President Obama has clearly conducted numerous meetings with the members of his Cabinet. You definitely have to hand it to Limbaugh--he has certainly never let the facts stand in his way.

Historical Events of the Day

The significance of the first event is due to its impact on the present day, not only from a political standpoint but a cultural and sociological as well. On August 4, 1961, Barack Hussein Obama was born at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu, HI. Both students at the time, his mother from Kansas and his Kenyan father divorced less than three years later. (And as many Republicans would have you believe, the exact moment of Obama's birth, or possibly even before, is when his parents and other family members, hospital officials, the Hawaii state government, the governments of both Kenya and the United States, the Democratic Party, etc. conceived their conspiracy to put Obama into the White House. Because, of course, we all know how racially tolerant the 1960s in America were.) Luckily that theory has been proven to be complete nonsense and the rest, as they say, is history.

The other event from history which occurred on August 4th also had a huge impact on the cultural and sociological world. Acting on a tip from a Dutch informer, the Nazi Gestapo captured fifteen-year-old Anne Frank and her family in a sealed off area of a warehouse in Amsterdam. Eluding detection by living in rooms with blacked out windows and never flushing the toilet during the day, the Franks had taken shelter in the warehouse in July 1942 to avoid deportation to a Nazi concentration camp. With her final entry into her now famous diary on August 1st, Anne and her family were arrested just three days later (and after twenty-five months in seclusion). They were transported to a concentration camp in Holland and, in September, Anne and the majority of her family were shipped to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German occupied Poland. And then, in the fall of 1944, with the Soviet liberation of Poland underway, Anne and her sister Margot were moved to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Suffering from the deplorable conditions of the camp, both sisters caught typhus and died in March 1945. (The camp was liberated by the British less than two months later.) Her father Otto was the only member to survive and, following the war, he returned to Amsterdam. He was reunited with Miep Gies, one of his former employees who had assisted in sheltering him and his family. Gies handed Anne's diary to him, which Gies had fortunately discovered undisturbed after the Nazi raid. Since its initial publication in 1947, "The Diary of Anne Frank" has been translated into more than fifty languages and serves as a literary testament to the nearly six million Jews, including Anne herself, silenced in the Holocaust.

Despite her and her family's two arduous years in hiding, Anne wrote the following as one of her last diary entries: "It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them because, in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end and that peace and tranquility will return again. In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out." I included this because I feel it is also extremely poignant to the trials and tribulations that President Obama has (and will continue to) experienced during his first six months in office.