Name game

Face it, being factually or logically true isn't what makes facts factual. As long as enough people want Barak Obama to be an America hating radical Muslim, he is. As long as there are enough people who want him not to be willing to pledge allegiance to a piece of cloth, or insist that he took his oath of office on the Koran, it doesn't matter that it is a lie. The only thing left of Democracy in the United States is the democracy of slander. Belief is what counts and in a nation desperately addicted to belief and to anger, there's always a ready market for both.

That the infamous Saddam Hussein al-Majid al-Awja contains the same Hussein, means that SenatorObama is Muslim as certainly as Abraham Lincoln was a Jew and General Omar Bradley was a Persian poet. There's nothing in a name. The name Barak, as Intellectual Insurgent once pointed out to me means "blessed" in many Semitic languages. Baruch is the Hebrew form and a thousand Hebrew prayers begin with the word that must have been on Jesus' lips from his childhood.

That John McCain's daughter Bridget was born in Pakistan is no more evidence of his or her secret Jihadi affiliation than that Obama's grandfather lived in Nairobi, and like the strange genetic discovery that Thomas Jefferson had a male ancestor from the middle east, it means nothing. Nobody seems to be concerned that General John Abizaid, former CENTCOM commander is a secret agent from Hamas or Gen. George Joulwan, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander of Europe might be a "terrorist." They have Arabic names.

So what about Regular names like John, which is from the Hebrew Yohannon; is McCain a Zionist?

So just what the hell was "conservative" radio host Bill Cunningham thinking when he described Barak Hussein Obama at a McCain rally in Cincinnati Tuesday saying

"All's going to be right with the world when the great prophet from Chicago takes the stand, and the world leaders who want to kill us will simply be singing [Kumbaya] together around the table with Barack Obama."

He was thinking that anything he can do to elect John McCain is justifiable; any lie, any slander, any old bucket of slime. He was thinking that Americans are so in love with hate and have such a need to believe things that justify it, that he would be greeted with cheers. What were those in the audience who actually cheered thinking? Probably the same sort of thing a chimpanzee thinks before attacking a neighboring band of apes.

Republicans, who seem to loathe Semitic names, have called Obama anti-Semitic. "Anti-Semites for Obama" is the title of a press release a few days ago, according to Wonkette. The same stupid game again. Absurdity, Irony: these are things these fake conservatives can't even perceive. It's a kind of blindness that allows a No matter that he speaks out against the bigotry he has some first hand knowledge of. Republicans like Congressman Jack Kingston who wasn't wearing a lapel pin to sneer that Obama doesn't wear a lapel pin simply can't bridge the gap between their fantasy world and the real one. He's a Muslim and a traitor and that's the same thing and they'll be damned if they're going to let reality get in the way. Perhaps they will be.

It was the Republican party of course who selected Cunningham as a speaker, not McCain; the same Republican party of George Walker Bush that attacked him for having a "black" daughter in the 2000 race; a daughter with Muslim ancestors and relatives with names like Hussein or perhaps Mohammad Ali or Karim Abdul Jabbar - names nobody should have reason to be ashamed of.

Perhaps there's a lot more shame to be felt for supporting such a party; for being loyal to that party more than to the nation that persists, much to my disgust, in allowing them to exist.