Sean Spicer: Hitler Didn't Gas His Own People - Just in "Holocaust Centers"

Arrogant, disrespectful, ignorant, intellectually challenged, depraved, abhorrent; these are the words that spring to mind thinking about the Press Secretary's latest glib pronouncement, that Hitler didn't use gas. Sean Spicer's recent frank admission that he made a mistake did nothing to assuage the fury about his ignorance, nor did his attempt to patch up his mistake by saying that Hitler didn't use gas on his own people, just in the Holocaust Centers. 

Not his own people? The Holocaust Centers?

Spicer, falsifier-in-chief, seems to utterly miss another point; the ongoing outrage that a press secretary for an American president is an ill-informed boor with such utter absence of integrity. He knows the president doesn't tell the truth and that as press secretary he lies to cover for his boss, and he doesn't care about it. Truth has no value for him. Evidenced by what he said in a talk at Chicago University early this year, "I have never lied... because if you lose the respect and trust of the press corps, you've got nothing. To go out and tell an all-out lie is something that's just not acceptable."

He hasn't changed much since his college days, where, as a student senator, he was called Sean Sphincter by the student paper The College Voice. He tried to instigate college legal action against them and sent in a pompous, angry complaint, for which he was satirized by another student paper Blats.

"Sean Spicer can talk and talk and talk, and after the dust settles and after the air is still, man mouths are quivering in awe and wonder at the way Sean can spin his yarn out for miles, without saying anything of consequence."

It's hard to comprehend how he ever became a communications director for various political bodies. Except of course that he's worked for Republicans, for whom the word communication doesn't mean imparting truth. He was the RNC Communications Director for six years before working for the Trump administration. You know a man by the friends he keeps.

It was easy to be passionate about politics when the Obamas were in the White House. It was frustrating and infuriating to watch the low-minded Republican Party with its obstructionist tactics relied on principles that are their core were driven by the need to protect the wealthy, white, conservative and often Christian element in America. But at least the President, First Lady, and members of the Administration were admirable in every respect. Classy, driven by integrity, brilliant, super-qualified, and good at their jobs. The world was safe with its most powerful country in their hands. And the press secretaries were a pleasure to listen to.

But this current Administration is inexperienced, boastful, utterly unqualified, mean-spirited and incompetent. And too intellectually challenged even to realize how they reveal their own stupidity every day. They can't formulate a single strategy among themselves. There's infighting, back-stabbing, disloyalty, outright betrayals, and a steady stream of lies and attacks on the foundations of democracy, taken straight out of Vladimir Putin's playbook, and even Adolph Hitler's.

Not only have they and their august leader made America a target of international scorn and satire, but they've made the world significantly unsafe already, in 82 days. Yet another record for the Trump administration, which has broken so many, all of them shameful.

Everybody is talking about how exhausting it is to try and keep abreast of the disasters, untruths, and missteps that have come to characterize the government. Americans and people around the world implored each other never to let this become the new normal and so far it hasn't. But it's sickening to read about and watch this crew of heartless, soul-less, gutless wonders every day. CNN giving Sean Spicer airtime every day has become painful. One learns as much about the truth with the sound muted. 

It's necessary to stay informed, but doing so taking its toll on everybody, from citizens to politicians to journalists and TV anchors and hosts. Passion in politics was easy when there were people of integrity in the White House who not only knew what they were doing but were also beautifully articulate. 

It's turned into a dreary affair, having to watch and listen to a president, his administration and various staff who have all earned their place in this idiocracy.

Photo: Holocaust Memorial at California Palace of the Legion of Honor

The Enemy of the People – the Free Press or Donald Trump?

"If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was & never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty & property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe." Thomas Jefferson to Colonel Yancy, Jan 6 1916

Not too long ago Donald Trump the candidate was boasting about how the press was giving him so much coverage that he didn't have to buy expensive campaign ads. He loved the press in those days. They loved him back. Then the liberal media developed a conscience, unequivocally condemning Trump as a dog's breakfast. Bigoted, sexist, racist, unworthy, unstable, unqualified.

Since his inauguration, they have been on him like an army of red ants. Reporting truthfully. Investigating. Doing their job with journalistic integrity and courage in a way that recalls Watergate. There is nowhere for the president to run, nowhere to hide. His attacks on the press have been constant and well-documented—mostly by himself, as they're executed in his tweets. Lately the current president's attacks on the media have intensified. His message has gone from labeling the press corrupt, fake news to calling it the enemy of the people. (To see his tweets in handwriting that matches his emotional maturity, download Trevor Noah's app.

The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017

It has a sinister and familiar ring to it. Initially it was used correctly, to describe Nero who, when Rome fell into ruin, took an expensive vacation and then ignored a revolt. The Senate declared him an enemy of the people. Nero committed suicide to avoid arrest and execution. In 1882 Ibsen wrote a play Enemy of the People, about a doctor who is persecuted for rightly and publicly criticizing the mayor. At first the townspeople are grateful, but they're manipulated and turned against him. Anybody thinking of Hillary Clinton at this point?

When focus of press was on Hillary's server--by same 'fake news' orgs/'enemies of the people' cited by @realDonaldTrump--he saw patriots.

— Carl Bernstein (@carlbernstein) February 18, 2017

The next public figure to use the phrase was Adolph Hitler, allegedly a fan of Ibsen. He twisted it, using it to describe the Jews. His propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels wrote on Nov 16 1941:

"Every Jew is our enemy in this historic struggle, regardless of whether he vegetates in a Polish ghetto or carries on his parasitic existence in Berlin or Hamburg or blows the trumpets of war in New York or Washington. All Jews by virtue of their birth and their race are part of an international conspiracy against National Socialist Germany… Each Jew is a sworn enemy of the people... If someone wears the Jewish star he is an enemy of the people… The Jews are the enemy's agents among us. He who stands by the Jews aids the enemy…"

Stalin and Mao both used the term to describe objectors, some of whom were slaughtered for their courage.

New York national affairs editor Gabriel Sherman had good reason to call the president's latest tweet "full-on dictator speak." Republican Senator John McCain echoed the sentiment, talking to Chuck Todd. 

WATCH: In an interview with @chucktodd - Senator John McCain reacts to Trump's tweet: "That's how dictators get started" pic.twitter.com/aZq6wnvxYe

— Yashar (@yashar) February 18, 2017

Reince Priebus' response to the president's tweet was "I think you should take it seriously. I think that the problem we've got is that we're talking about bogus stories like the one in the New York Times, that we've had constant contact with Russian officials. The next day, the Wall Street Journal had a story that the intel community was not giving the president a full intelligence briefing. Both stories grossly inaccurate, overstated, overblown, and it's total garbage."

Shades of Richard Nixon. On the December 1972 tape he's recorded as saying "the press is the enemy of the people." In July 1974 he said that Watergate, "the broadest but the thinnest scandal in American history… would have been a blip [but for the press] who hate my guts with a passion..." In August he resigned.

The current US president should take heed. Fun as it is for him to use the tactics of  Stalin, Mao, Hitler and his propaganda machine and to echo Nixon, those men all met their just deserts for being, like Nero, the true enemy of the people. The thing is, how many people will have to suffer before this US president meets his fate? Trump's attack on the press has been well mixed up with exploitation of fear of Muslims and Mexicans. He's upping that ante every day. His Muslim ban didn't succeed but his message got through to his supporters and now he's planning another executive action to replace it. Again, taking a page out of Hitler's playbook, using Joseph Goebbels as his mouthpiece.

"It is the job of the government to deal with [the Jews]. No one has the right to act on his own, but each has the duty to support the state's measures against the Jews, to defend them with others, and to avoid being misled by any Jewish tricks. The security of the state requires that of us all."

For "Jews" read "Muslims," "Mexicans" and "the press". The truth is that the Roman Senate's use of the phrase enemy of the people was the one we need to revert to. The security of the state requires that the president is held to account. Hopefully the Judiciary and Democratic politicians will continue to fight for all civil rights. But without a free press there is nothing to protect democracy from becoming a dictatorship. Again, to quote Carl Bernstein, 

The most dangerous 'enemy of the people' is presidential lying--always. Attacks on press by @realDonaldTrump more treacherous than Nixon's.

— Carl Bernstein (@carlbernstein) February 18, 2017

But the final words go to former President Barack Obama, speaking at his final press conference (the link takes you to the NYT page with the full transcript).

"...You’re not supposed to be fans [or] to be complimentary. You’re supposed to cast a critical eye on folks who hold enormous power and make sure we're accountable to the people who sent us here. 

It goes without saying that essential to [our democracy] is a free press... Our democracy needs you, to establish a baseline of facts and evidence that we can use as a starting point for the kind of reasoned and informed debates that ultimately lead to progress. And so my hope is that you will continue with the...hard work of getting to the bottom of stories and getting them right and to push those of us in power to be the best version of ourselves and to push this country to be the best version of itself.

I have no doubt that you will do so... I want to thank you all for your extraordinary service to our democracy."

Could Trump Really Ever Be President?

Click here to buy "Trump: An American Presidency"

Democrats keep saying that Trump can't win the general election. I hope he won’t but I don’t think it’s a slam dunk.

In fact I think I think that this terrible man with zero self control who despises the poor, tramples over anybody in his path, misrepresents his wealth, trashes women, quotes Mussolini, does not denounce the KKK, stirs paranoia, racism and hatred, embraces conspiracy theories, lies pathologically and has positive support from one foreign leader—Vladimir Putin—actually has quite a good chance of being America’s Next President.

I wonder what Hitler looked like to the masses when he was on the rise and before he gained absolute power. Possibly not that dissimilar to Trump at the moment.

Apart from giving racists and bigots permission to voice their hatred he gave ordinary people permission to voice their frustration and they’re the ones he cleverly manipulated and who ended up handing him his power on a plate. But how many of them would have supported him if they had known the trajectory he was on? Probably not so many. The signs were there but they didn’t want to look. And they were carried on the wave of his peculiar kind of personal power. Look how that ended, for Jews, for the world. And, let's not forget, for Germany.

Trump is telling his supporters to raise their right hand in salute to him. He has a vitriolic hatred for poor people, is a pathological liar and a misogynist, encourages racism and bigotry, whips up anger, promotes violence, calls for curtailing freedom of the press, permits and even encourages the beating up of protesters, is running on an anti-Muslim platform if you can call what he's doing a platform. Now he's anti-Islam. It’s beyond believable.

No, beyond believable is that he had brought a bunch of his Trump Wine and Trump Water and Trump Steaks to one of his rallies. He made a big deal about the steaks. But Trump Steaks doesn’t exist as a business anymore and those steaks were from Bush Brothers’ Provision Company. Oh the irony.

How can a single thinking adult in the world support him? I decided to write to all the delegates who have endorsed him so far and beg them to see the reality and think long and hard about what they’re doing. Wiki has a page on Trump's delegates.

I started with Jeff Sessions, US Senator from Alabama. From his photo on Wiki he looks like a sensible guy. Then I read a little.

Ah. On February 28 this year he endorsed Trump. On March 3 Trump picked him as chairman of his National Security Advisory Committee.

And not such a sensible guy after all. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was born in Selma in 1946. He doesn’t appear to have been much moved by Civil Rights activities. He referred to the NAACP and the ACLU as communist-inspired and un-American because “they forced civil rights down the throats of people”. He also called African-American Assistant US Attorney Thomas Figures “boy” and said “be careful what you say to white folks.”

He said once that he thought the Klan was okay until he found out they smoked pot. He was joking of course. The Klan is something to joke about?

He was a big Bush legislation supporter, including for the 2001 and 2003 tax cut packages. He’s against same-sex marriage and opposed the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repeal Act. He also voted against adding violent acts based on sexual orientation and gender identity to federal hate-crimes law. 

He’s anti-immigration reform. And he voted for expanded construction of a Southern border fence. Of course he did.  

I guess I won’t be writing to Jeff Sessions. Not much point. Moving along, the next guy on Wiki’s alphabetical list was former US Senator Scott Brown. 

He looks like a nice guy too. I looked him up on Google images. Oh. Very nice guy. Once a model, he posed nude for a centerfold. Not surprising, given that body. His story is pretty moving, though. He had a difficult childhood. His parents divorced when he was a year old and his mother lived on welfare, then he was abused by his stepfathers and a camp counselor who threatened to kill him if he told anybody. He got into politics and not everything he did was bad. A moderate Republican, he was the first GOP Senator to support a federal ban on assault weapons after Sandy Hook..

I could write to him, I thought. I looked for more about him and found an article on abcnews.go.com.

He said “I know all of the candidates and I respect the hell out of each and every one of them” and that he endorses Trump because “I know he’ll surround himself with people who want to do it for the flag. But, no disrespect to any of the other candidates because I truly love them. Chris and Marco? I love them like brothers from another mother.”

Cross Scott Brown off the list. Two down and four hundred odd to go… Maybe it was a bad idea. But I tell you what’s a good idea, and that is to read Trump: An American Presidency by seasoned journalist Steve Majerus-Collins.

“A fictional oral history of the administration of President Donald Trump. The book examines what might really happen if Trump were to come out on top in November. Would he build his wall? Defeat ISIS? Make America great again or destroy it? It's a quick read but one that offers some perspective on a candidate like none before.”

The introduction is amusing and I thought great, I’m in for a riotous read. I was. But it was one of those books where your blood runs cold while you’re laughing because the picture the author paints should just be absolutely fantastical but it isn’t; it’s absolutely and horribly possible.

This gem of a book is only 99c. Buy it because you're worth it! Trump: An American Presidency. I hope not. For the sake of America. For the sake of the world.

Bernie Sanders Supporters Associate Hillary Clinton with Hitler

When I was in my early teens I learned about Hitler and the Nazis and the horror of it has stayed with me my whole life. Some years ago I discovered that I have Jewish ancestry. I've wondered if anybody I’m related to had to endure a concentration camp. I think about it a lot. 

Recently I visited the Holocaust museum in Cape Town. I’ve seen many photographs and international exhibitions of art exposing the brutality. I’ve been frightened and touched and moved and angered over and over again each time. But nothing prepared me for that day. The museum is constructed so that you move through sections representing different aspects of the Nazi atrocities. There are a lot of photographs of victims who are named and many more who are not. 

Except for a young girl I was alone. It was quiet and respectful and felt like a church. I moved from photograph to photograph of anguished men, women and children. I wept and wept and wept. I wanted to say I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wanted to say to the nameless I saw you, I will remember you. I cried that humans could be so brutal.

At some point the girl came up to me quietly and put her arm around me. No words. Just love and kindness. It made cry even more. I didn't want consolation. I wanted them to have that love.

Today I was looking at what my Facebook friends have posted and I came across this. I’ve removed my friend’s name out of respect. It’s a video but I’m not going to provide the link. 

Anger me? No kidding. First off, the term Hillarynista is an insult, but much worse is the Hitler association. I didn't want to see any more, didn't watch the video. I don't care what Hillary said. It isn't funny. There's nothing good or entertaining or funny or profound or productive or remotely truthful about associating her with Hitler, no matter what she's done or said. It's not just the insult to her and her supporters that bothers me; in fact that's the least of it. It's the insult to Holocaust victims and their families of making a casual joke out of the cause of their terrible suffering.

I said as much in the comment section. I want to say more, not just to my friend, but to anybody who thinks comparing somebody to Hitler is a joke.

Do you think this is funny?

Embed from Getty Images

Or this?

Embed from Getty Images

How about this?

Embed from Getty Images

I found another photo of piles of dead bodies with a doctor in the middle trampling over them. I couldn't embed it without paying $150 so take my word for it. By piles I mean hundreds and hundreds of people who surely lived through agony before their lives were snuffed out. And the doc casually strolling on them was the guy who had injected them with petrol. That one isn't funny either.

It's enough now. If you support Bernie Sanders then write about him. Don't kid yourself that you're promoting peace or solution or love when you casually share a joke that compares Hillary Clinton to Hitler. You're spreading hate.

Greek Bailout and Reform: BBC Doesn't Give the Whole Picture

Here’s the great thing about the BBC; if you have a complaint about the news you can message them. My complaint is that their reporting of Greek’s position is so bloody biased. I’m sick to death of the perspective that the Greeks are a lazy, irresponsible, hopeless, greedy good-for-nothing bunch with a leader who has no integrity. I clicked ‘contact us’, selected ‘complaints’ and answered a bunch of questions, each with its own pestilential pop-up page.

I dismissed the pestilential pop-up thought ‘couldn’t they have put all of these on one page?’—silly, it’s the BBC. They wouldn’t be so dumb as to put complainers through unnecessary hassle.

Finally I get to ‘for complaints about the news’ go to another bloody site. I take a deep breath—actually I lie. I do some highly appropriate, imaginative and very satisfying ranting and raving, then I take a deep breath and go to the bloody site. Where there’s no ‘complaints’ section. But there is one for ‘do you have an idea for a news story?’. I believe I do, I thought, and clicked on that. Below is my letter to them.

"My idea is unique and you'll pardon my sarcasm I hope and not see it as reason to dismiss my suggestion. Why not present both sides of the story regarding Greece; those who don’t support Greece and those who do? You could also place as much emphasis on the humanitarian crisis as you do on the money. 

You seek responses from European ministers to the latest Greek proposals and present only the Lithuanian finance minister saying there is no trust left for Greece. You don't interview Francois Hollande or Christine Lagarde on the same subject but why not? If you presented all three, side by side, we'd have a different picture.

On that matter, why don't you interview Professor Paul Krugman and ask for his views on austerity? Or interview Angela Merkel and pin her down on the fairness or otherwise of half of Germany’s debt being forgiven after WWII and the rest restructured on terms purely based on Germany’s capacity to repay. And these generous countries were the ones Germany had decimated; they had plenty of reason to punish Germany. The country had harbored and promoted a psychopath and numerous serial killers, the consequence of which was to wreak havoc on the entire world.

Why don’t we see this talked about over and over again in conjunction with the hardline stance of Angela Merkel et al? Why don’t you expose the hypocrisy of Germany today? It’s very relevant. 

Your reporters and anchors talk about 'reform' all the time as if reform was only about saving money but you never mention, in the same breath, which is when it needs to be mentioned to present the truth, the negative economic aspects of that ‘reform’. You rarely mention the humanitarian consequences and when you do you don't place it side by side with the austerity hacks' perspective.

But you should, because you boast in your PR that BBC has the best news coverage. It doesn’t. You don’t have anything different to SkyNews or CNN. This is an instance where you could truly lead. The double standards in the way Greece is being treated and how that treatment is being covered are off the charts. There are two possible conclusions, as far as I can see. Either the BBC editors aren’t smart enough to see what’s happening, or they’re plenty smart and the BBC doesn’t want to tell the truth.

Neither is particularly flattering. On thinking about both these options they kind of lead to one: The BBC news team is a lazy, irresponsible, hopeless, greedy good-for-nothing bunch with a leader who has no integrity."

p.s. Don't feel too bad. Take consolation from the fact that SkyNews and CNN are just as bad.

Lest We Forget, Racism Isn't Over in the US

Bill Hudson's photo (courtesy Wiki), shot in Birmingham on May 3 1963, shows Parker High School student Walter Gadsden being restrained by a white police officer so the dog could lunge at his stomach.

There’s been a lot of talk since Barack Obama was elected that racism is over in the US. The Civil Rights Movement was successful; everybody’s equal now and responsible for making their own lives work; poverty is a choice. Right.

Lest We Forget. Originally it was from Recessional, a poem by Rudyard Kipling entreating God to save Brits from their propensity to over-celebrate their power and lapse into indulgence and profanity. It refers to Christ’s alleged sacrifice on the cross. As a child I associated it with Hitler’s slaughter of 6 million Jews. But name any atrocity, really, at a personal or societal level.

Powerful phrase, that, Lest We Forget. The thing is, we do forget, all the time. It’s inconvenient to remember. Then every now and then the consequences of what we don’t want to acknowledge explode in our faces.

The following passages are from the Justice Department Report on their investigation into the Ferguson Police Department. Italics are mine.

…We have discovered evidence of racial bias in emails sent by Ferguson officials, all of whom are current employees, almost without exception through their official City of Ferguson email accounts, and apparently sent during work hours [between] several police and court supervisors, including FPD supervisors and commanders. The following emails are illustrative:

1. A November 2008 email stated that President Barack Obama would not be President for very long because “what black man holds a steady job for four years.”
2. A March 2010 email mocked African Americans through speech and familial stereotypes, using a story involving child support. One line from the email read: “I be so glad that dis be my last child support payment! Month after month, year after year, all dose payments!”
3. An April 2011 email depicted President Barack Obama as a chimpanzee.
4. A May 2011 email stated: “An African-American woman in New Orleans was admitted into the hospital for a pregnancy termination. Two weeks later she received a check for $5,000. She phoned the hospital to ask who it was from. The hospital said, ‘Crimestoppers.’”
5. A June 2011 email described a man seeking to obtain “welfare” for his dogs because they are “mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who their Daddies are.”
6. An October 2011 email included a photo of a bare-chested group of dancing women, apparently in Africa, with the caption, “Michelle Obama’s High School Reunion.”
7. A December 2011 email included jokes that are based on offensive stereotypes about Muslims.

[There were many others. The senders were not reported or disciplined and the emails were usually forwarded along to others.]

…African Americans experience disparate impact in nearly every aspect of Ferguson’s law enforcement system. Despite making up 67% of the population, [they] accounted for 85% of FPD’s traffic stops, 90% of FPD’s citations, and 93% of FPD’s arrests from 2012 to 2014.

While the record demonstrates a pattern of stops that are improper from the beginning, it also exposes encounters that start as constitutionally defensible but quickly cross the line. For example, in the summer of 2012, an officer detained a 32-year-old African-American man who was sitting in his car cooling off after playing basketball. The officer arguably had grounds to stop and question the man, since his windows appeared more deeply tinted than permitted under Ferguson’s code.

Without cause, the officer went on to accuse the man of being a pedophile, prohibit the man from using his cell phone, order the man out of his car for a pat-down despite having no reason to believe he was armed, and ask to search his car.

When the man refused, citing his constitutional rights, the officer reportedly pointed a gun at his head, and arrested him. The officer charged the man with eight different counts, including making a false declaration for initially providing the short form of his first name (e.g., “Mike” instead of “Michael”) and an address that, although legitimate, differed from the one on his license. The officer also charged the man both with having an expired operator’s license, and with having no operator’s license in possession.

The man told us he lost his job as a contractor with the federal government as a result of the charges…

…Officers command dogs to apprehend by biting even when multiple officers are present. They make no attempt to slow situations down, creating time to resolve the situation with lesser force. They appear to use canines not to counter a physical threat but to inflict punishment.

They act as if every offender has a gun, justifying their decisions based on what might be possible rather than what the facts indicate is likely. Overall, FPD officers’ use of canines reflects a culture in which officers choose not to use the skills and tactics that could resolve a situation without injuries, and instead deploy tools and methods that are almost guaranteed to produce an injury of some type …

Then there’s the University of Oklahoma’s SAE frat house chant recently captured on video: “There will never be a n****r SAE, you can hang them from a tree but they will never sign with me. There will never be a n****r SAE.”

Sure, racism is a thing of the past in America.