Fresh Loaf

• Scary: ‘I think we’ve done pretty well.’ Dick Cheney has no regrets about eight years in office.
• WTF: New Jersey couple upset after ShopRite denied baking a cake with their 3-year-old child’s name: Adolf Hitler Campbell … all they want is a little tolerance … they eventually got the cake … at Walmart.
• Seriously? Seriously: Muslim woman arrested in Douglasville for refusing to remove her head scarf.
• Why don’t you ask me about it later? Poll finds 63% are already hurt by the economic downturn.
• Not only is she a hate crime, she’s a hate crime against humanity.
• This should be a crime … Madonna and Guy Ritchie reach a (rumored) $76 million dollar divorce settlement??! You can say they “bailed” each other “out.”
• Speaking of dollars and cents, the Fed cuts key rate to near zero …the dollar is no longer as appealing a haven amidst the current financial crisis … and thus, it sinks.
• First face transplant performed in the U.S. Who would’ve thought a John Travolta/Nicholas Cage movie turned out to be prophetic…
• Want an incentive to switch to Firefox or any other web browser? Internet Explorer has a security flaw that may expose your personal data to malicious websites. Microsoft is working on a fix. (And yes, it’s IE 7).

Happy humpday!!

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Athens, last week compared President-elect Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler. He was responding to a July 2 speech in which Obama proposed expanding the Foreign Service, Peace Corps and Americorps.

“[W}e’re going to grow our Foreign Service, open consulates that have been shuttered, and double the size of the Peace Corps by 2011 to renew our diplomacy.

“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

—    Obama’s speech in Colorado Springs

Right-wing pundits and bloggers have quoted the phrase “civilian national security force” to insinuate Obama wishes to assemble an oppressive national police force.

“That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”

“You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential.”

— Broun, as quoted in a Nov. 10 interview with the Associated Press. He later said: I regret saying it that way” but “ do not apologize for stating the obvious.”

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(h/t to Scott Freeman’s post on this here Fresh Loaf blog )

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What can Broun do for us? He can start by saying fewer shockingly stupid things.

In the race between Paul Broun and Lynn Westmoreland to be Georgia’s Dumbassiest Congressman, Paul Broun just pulled way ahead.

In an interview Monday with the Associated Press, Broun compared President-elect Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler.

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

“That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did,” Broun said. “When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”

[. . .]

“We can’t be lulled into complacency,” Broun said. “You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential.

I love that bit at the end. I’m not comparing him to Hitler, except for the two times I just compared him to Hitler.

The powerful civilian “force” to which Broun refers is Obama’s proposed expansion of federally-funded Americorps-type public service programs. As Obama proposes, they would perform such Nazi-like functions as giving tuition vouchers to college students who tutor school children, feed the homeless and assist the elderly.

Helping kids learn algebra. Starting WWII and the Holocaust. Pretty much the same thing, right? I can see why Broun is so confused.

Incidentally, one of the Obama plan’s inspirations is FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, which during the Great Depression built several popular parks in Georgia, including a very nice one in Broun’s district.

In case you don’t remember FDR, Paul, he was President when we beat Hitler.

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