Thursday, April 23, 2009

The Obama Jugend Nazi Horde vs Fact


By way of a friend landed a link in my mailbox that courtesy of The Voice (yes, that's the voice in your head) lead to the following headline:
Obama Youth Brigade: Church Attendance Forbidden
Below it, the author, Jonas Clark asks: "Is this the change you really voted for? President Obama has only been in office for two months. Now we have HR 1388. The Bill was sponsored by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) with 37 others. The Bill was introduced to the floor of the House of Representatives where both Republicans and Democrats voted 321-105 in favor.
This bill’s title is called “Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education” (GIVE). It forms what some are calling “Obama’s Youth Brigade.” Obama’s plan is require anyone receiving school loans and others to serve at least three months as part of the brigade. His goal is one million youth! This has serious Nazi Germany overtones to it."

Oh my, how could we not have seen it coming that Americans in their demure demeanor would vote a new Hitler into office? Surely, the writer has some strong arguments which I'll attempt to refute with facts. First, let's look at "Obama’s plan is require anyone receiving school loans and others to serve at least three months as part of the brigade."
Did you notice "and others?" That means everyone else. Is that in the Bill? No, it's not. Neither is the word "brigade." The Bill is about recipients of school loans and if you are one, the chance to spend 3 months in a pay-back scheme where the recipients volunteer for social, economic, and ecological government programs. Don't take out a government loan and you won't be part of GIVE.
As for some calling GIVE "O
bama’s Youth Brigade," no one calls it that, except Jonas Clark and Glenn Beck (FEMA concentration camps), with help from the unhinged Michelle Bachmann, whose paranoia gave birth to "Obama's re-education camps." Indeed, Third Reich references abound in the extreme right's tempest in a teabag brain bonanza.

Clark continues: "The Bill would forbid any student in the brigade to participate in “engaging in religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of religious proselytization.” Even though Clark tries to pass off the foregoing as a quote, it is in fact not wording as it appears in the Bill, and his simplistic conclusion, "That means no church attendance or witnessing" further destroys all validity with a false implication that is as terse as it is inaccurate.
Lastly, he asks, "Again, is this what America voted for?"
Well, no, America didn't vote this time for Jonas Clark's extreme right wing view of an America that tortures, suspends habeus corpus, promotes indefinite incarceration without trial, kidnaps foreign militants, starts wars, and wastes billions of taxpayers monies in shady deals with combatants and dictatorial governments.

Unfazed by reality Clark lists the offending parts of Bill HR 1388. Let's read along:
‘SEC. 132A. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS.
‘(a) Prohibited Activities- An approved national service position under this subtitle may not be used for the following activities:
‘(1) Attempting to influence legislation.
‘(2) Organizing or engaging in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes.
‘(7) Engaging in religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of proselytization, consistent with section 132.
‘(10) Conducting a voter registration drive or using Corporation funds to conduct a voter registration drive.

Yeah, I know that the religulous right regards Obama's presidency as the second coming of Hitler, and that the paranoia apparatus of the frequently wrong Christian Right is in overdrive, but misinterpreting this Bill only leads to the kind of distortion of facts Hitler's propaganda machine would have been proud of.
In fact, this bipartisan Bill (which has meanwhile been put into law) seeks to engage youth that receives government scholarships to pay back in sweat equity, much like the Peace Corp, or Bill Clinton's Americorp, from which it sprouted.

GIVE keeps religion (read: religeous fanatics) at arm's length while the participants are carrying out the duties they chose. They can engage in worship all they want, just not while on the government's "payroll." If I were paying an employee and he would forego his task by proselytizing I would have a problem with that too. Nowhere does it say Obama (Hitler II) wants to turn those that sign up (likely youths in their twenties or thirties, who'd like to serve their country, but not by joining the military) into mindless minions. As part of GIVE they are simply not supposed to engage in activities GIVE doesn't and cannot endorse, such as building a church in Africa, or teaching abstinence while withholding condom distribution to the poor, or linking receipt of medical services to participation in religious activities, for example.

While I applaud the newfound vigilance of those American people who were largely in a state of moronic morose during the Bush/Cheney fairytale times, holding Obama up to scrutiny should be done on the basis of facts. A simple tweak here and a slight distortion or insinuation there was exactly how the Nazis tried to manipulate the German citizenry and ultimately mobilize it with disastrous result. We have to be vigilant indeed and in that I side with Jonas Clark, but it cannot be done by pushing a different agenda and trying to fool your readers into believing the opposite of what words say. Words have meaning, and so do lies. Jonas Clark, you're a liar and I pity those that rely on you for information and are unable to see the forest of facts for the trees you put in front of them.