A Week To Go, And The Kooks And Psychos Are Out In Force

To follow is a video of James David Manning, chief pastor of ATLAH World Missionary Church in New York, in which Manning makes comparisons of Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler that are, to say the very least, extremely broad.

This kind of demented propaganda is still making the rounds over e-mail, and it's gotten a lot of views on YouTube. It's been out there for a while, but it won't hurt to remind readers about the kind of kooks who are on the loose.

Analogies of this kind usually have to have a lot more behind them. For example, if Obama had, before this crucial point in history, led an attempt to overthrow the government; spent time in prison and written a book there advocating racism and genocide, among other things; and led a militant political party that engaged rivals in bloody street fights -- well, then the analogy might hold up better.

From what I can tell here, the analogy is based on only one thing: Adolf Hitler was a charismatic public speaker, and so is Barack Obama. What a striking coincidence!

In the tradition of Looney Tunes, on with the show, this is it:



I learned a few things from this. Pastor Manning refers to the "Roman and Jewish press" printing lies about Jesus. Wow. I didn't know they had printing presses back when Jesus was "hung" (Manning's word for it).

And, perhaps Manning himself has more in common with Hitler than he's likely to let on. According to his Wikipedia bio:

As a younger man, Pastor Manning burglarized homes, mostly on Long Island. He spent about three and a half years in prison in New York and Florida for burglary, robbery, larceny, criminal possession of a weapon, and other charges before his release in 1978. While in prison, he became a devout Christian.[1]

It's funny how people like Manning manage to find some sort of mask, and being born again is among the common ones. I'd say he's picked up on a new and better kind of larceny. It's cooler when you don't have to carry a gun or face jail time.

A final note: Do you detect a hint of jealousy?

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Holocaust Survivor Stepping Down

The only Holocaust survivor elected to Congress is retiring.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rep. Tom Lantos, who chairs the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and is the only Holocaust survivor elected to the Congress, on Wednesday said he has been diagnosed with cancer and will not seek re-election in November.

The 79-year-old California Democrat, who was born in Hungary and twice escaped Nazi labor camps, said he will serve the remainder of his 14th term, which ends in January 2009.

In announcing he has been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus and would end his House career at the end of his term, Lantos reflected on his life.

"It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress," Lantos said.

Shortly after Lantos came to Congress in 1981, he pushed for legislation granting honorary U.S. citizenship to Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. That came nearly four decades after Wallenberg protected Lantos and other occupants of an apartment building from Nazi arrest.

Throughout his congressional career, Lantos was an outspoken critic of international human rights abuses.

Lantos helped win passage in 2002 of a congressional resolution authorizing the U.S. attack on Iraq that unfolded the following year. More recently, Lantos has been critical of the "U.S. involvement in the civil war in Iraq."

When Democrats gained majority control of the House a year ago, Lantos used his new position as chairman of the foreign affairs panel to conduct oversight of the Iraq war, including a high-profile hearing last September on progress from the U.S. troop increase.

Of course, Bradley Smith, David Duke, and Hutton Gibson all deny the existence of of Rep. Lantos, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary.

[cross-posted at Lost Chord]

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