The news came today, via the New York Times, that Dinko Sakic, the leader of a Nazi death camp, has died:

Mr. Sakic, the last living commander of a World War II-era concentration camp, died Sunday at 86 in a hospital in Zagreb, the Croatian news agency Hina reported, citing Croatia’s prison system as its source. Mr. Sakic was serving a 20-year sentence for crimes against humanity.

Given how the mainstream media has handled the death of other unrepentant racists and bigots, this is how I imagine they'll report his obituary:

Sakic was a disciplined worker who was strongly dedicated to his beliefs.  During World War Two, he ran a popular camp, which helped many a participate just melt off the pounds, using a modern-day approach to ancient techniques.  He was known to have a sense of humor, laughing and clapping in the face of adversity.  

He is survived by a wife and three children.

This is important history, and vitally important, considering how much the Right made a fool of themselves attacking Obama for getting a few facts wrong on what was so obviously true.  Barack Obama's great-uncle, Charles T. Payne, is a true hero to this country for what he did in World War Two.  Although Obama's family has been very private (and understandably so), Charles has now come forward with his story.  You can read it here.  It gets me all emotional, on the incredible sacrifice he made, and equally so with his statement about his great nephew, "He's truly an astounding young man and always has been."  More below the fold.

O’REILLY: Okay, now he shows up on Saturday at the most hateful - there is not — and I’m including the Nazis and the Klan in here — there is not a more hateful group in the country than these Daily Kos people . . . Hateful, hateful, hateful. The rhetoric that they use and the rhetoric that the Klan and the Nazis use are the same rhetoric. It’s hate. Everyone knows that.

Note: Blow Riley asked me if I would post this for him, and since I didn't have another diary planned for today, I agreed. Evidently, he attended NN'08 in Austin, and was so excited by what he saw there that he immediately registered on Daily Kos. When he found out he'd have to wait a week before he could submit a diary, he got frantic. I figured posting this was the least I could do for him. From the looks of it, it seems like The Bill O'Viator had a somewhat different experience than the rest of us had. But let's let him tell it in his own words and pictures, shall we? - o.h.

NOTE: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES WHICH MAY SHOCK SOME READERS.

Amazon’s Kindle has something called NowNow, where you can send them a question about anything via your Kindle and you’ll get up to three answers "from real people." This was my question, just to see how they would answer it:

In the event that the U.S. closes down like Nazi Germany did, will people be allowed to leave? Who is most likely to be in peril?

Here’s the three different answers, which arrived via different emails and apparently were written by different people. I thought this was very interesting! I mean, you’ve gotta love it. Now I’m tempted to really start messing with their minds! LOL!

After years of studying the WWII era including wide-ranging scholarship on the rise of Nazism, I remain at a loss in understanding the unfathomable evil of the nazis. There appears to be absolutely no rational basis in all that is human for what the nazis did.  

At the dentist office waiting for my daughter to get out of surgery - she was having her wisdom teeth removed - I was having a discussion with my daughter’s mother, (okay, my ex-wife) about immigration. She started it. I won’t go into the details of that issue during which she, in frustration with my well reasoned responses, dug her fingernails into my upper arm. Because she is now to the far right of Attila-the-Hun, her absurd view of the immigration issue really, in my mind, wasn’t the most bothersome of her concepts. Her argument to control illegal immigrants was to have electronic identification implanted in them so that they could be tracked.

 Or rather maybe they think that "We the People" are stupid and naive. I just watched the "Monkey ass Nazi Bitch" George Bush telling Congress and the Senate that we need off-shore oil drilling. Can't people see what is going on or should I lose my faith in "We the People?" I will excuse the media for not investigating this further, not informing us and being "Stupid and Naive" because they are owned by the "Power Elite." We are being manipulated by the power elite to accept off-shore drilling. More below.

The Bushes and Hitler's appeasement

By Robert Parry

My first diary entry will probably not be very illuminating.  It is late at night, and I will probably end up rambling.  I intend my second and following entries to be more substantive.  There certainly is a lot on my mind these days and it is getting harder and harder to get a reality check when one turns on the TV or picks up the newspaper and gets assaulted with the serious claim that talking to Iran is the same thing as giving Adolf Hitler half of Czechoslovakia.

According to Ray McGovern these NeoCons of yours were known throughout Washington, well before they got elected not once but twice, as the ‘crazies’ and at this phase we can all say rightfully so. Name a nuttier group in history. I know you’re gonna say it was the Nazis and yes, they had their own particular vision of how the Earth should be dominated by the Nation they served and yes, they did nutty, awful things because nobody was able to stop them, but would you say they were nuttier? Have you read "Project for the New American Century?" Maybe not the same game but certainly in the ballpark. You know, 'the Global Domination/Damnation' ballpark?

What if the only significant structural differences between Neocon and Nazi was that Adolph Hitler was but one man, whereas the PNAC were MANY of the most powerful men on earth?

Now that we have ample evidence that The Right is often wildly and dangerously wrong.......
How Conservative businessmen like the Bush Family actually feed the beasts who later come and bite us....from Nazis to bin Laden...to The Business Plot to overthrow FDR.....and now, Iraq.....

 This diary illustrates with pictures and clear examples how wrong is Bush's claim that the Left have "foolish delusions"  - If Chamberlain and Bush had only taken the Left's warnings seriously. . . .

We should oblige him and walk through it...And openly discuss the Bush Family's ties to Hitler and the Nazi party....

But nothing I could ever write could match the posting at Huffington Post by Larisa Alexandrovna....

I refer you to:

All the President's Nazis (real and imagined): An Open Letter to Bush

Apropos of today, according to Fox News:

Documents: Bush's Grandfather Directed Bank Tied to Man Who Funded Hitler

Friday , October 17, 2003

WASHINGTON —

President Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government documents show.
Prescott Bush (search) was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp. (search), a New York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

Fritz Thyssen (search) was an early financial supporter of Hitler, whose Nazi party Thyssen believed was preferable to communism. ...

How soon do we forget that it literally required an act of Congress to severe the connections between George Bushs grandfather, Prescott Bush, and the Third Reich.  Files recently recovered from the National Archives reveal that a firm in which Prescott Bush was a director, had its assets seized in 1942, under the Trading with the Enemy Act. It would behoove the Israeli cabinet to keep in mind the Bush family legacy while it listens to Geogre Bushs lofty pronouncements about appeasement.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/...

So Obama is obliquely accused of 'appeasement'?  How ironic that at the time Obamas grandfather was marching with Patton in Europe,  Bushs grandfather was making money on the Nazi war machine that Obamas grandfather confronted.

I light of Bush's recent comments about appeasement, not to mention constant comparisons between Democrats and Nazi-Appeasers, I feel obligated to point out the obvious facts:

In World War II, Republicans tried to appease the Nazis; it was the Democrats who insisted on war.

Big Move... Waxman joined in to the O-Band.

I've just heard on CNN that Jack Cafferty said, "Henry Waxman endorsed to Obama."

What a beautiful day!

After the historical statement of W at the Knesset in Jerusalem, that Horror in Chief seems to unify and gulvanize all the Dems and the Repubs with brains together.

While I'm typing this entry, the continuous accusations against W keeps on coming to the 'Situation Room.' Wolf Blitzer got really busy to introduce each of the comments from John Kerry, HRC, and from even McSame.

Ho, Ho, Ho.... It's almost like our Knessetmas coming!

Much has been said here about President Bush's speech before the knesset this morning.  Many diarists and commentors have made reference to the president's grandfather, Prescott Bush, who, as head of Brown Brothers Harriman, was, in effect, the American banker to Nazi Germany.

Prescott B's ties with German and German-friendly firms such as Thyssen and UBC continued long after Pearl Harbor and the US declaration of war on Germany in December of 1941, ending only in August of the following year when BBH's Nazi-linked assets were seized by the US government under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

The story was covered in great detail by the Guardian newspaper in 2004.  Their coverage can be found here.

Cross-posted by Will Bunch at my Philadelphia Daily News blog, Attytood:

I've seen a lot of sad things in American politics in my lifetime -- the resignation of a president who became a national disgrace after he oversaw a campaign of break-ins and cover-ups, another who circumvented the Constitution to trade arms for hostages, and yet is now hailed as national hero. And those paled to what we have seen in the last seven years -- flagrant disregard for the Constitution, the launching of a "pre-emptive" war on false pretenses, and discussions about torture and other shocking abuses inside the White House inner sanctum.

But now it's come to this: A new low that I never imagined was even possible.