So, walking back to work after lunch today, I ran into a pack of crazies blocking the sidewalk in front of the Post Office. They had this poster up:
They also handed me
this crazy bullshit from LaRouchePAC.
An excerpt, which seems to be referring to the debt ceiling deal of Tuesday:
ALERT: THIS IS OBAMA'S HITLER COUP...
...The agreement is the death of the United States. And if we don't stop it, right now, that could be the end. So therefore, anything we were going to say this morning, has to be updated. That's the emergency.
Everything we thought was the case on the basis of the reading of the press this morning, is not accurate. It's misleading. It's a partial story which does not get to the meat of the thing. And Debbie gave me very urgently a summary of this thing. But we have to get it immediately. Because this thing is going down fast.
This is intended to be the Hitler Coup, right now. It's the equivalent of the Hitler Coup, only it's worse. You're going to see a lot of dead Americans piling up on the streets, and I mean it literally—unless we turn this thing around.
So, let's recap. Lydon LaRouche types say "Obama=Hitler" and that there will literally be "Dead Americans puling up on the streets." Aaahhh. I never knew the President was a fascist, thanks for letting me know! On the subject of dead Americans, the only stretch I can come up with that makes any sense at all is that they are referring to those who will lose Medicaid and Medicare coverage as a result of the planned cuts in the debt ceiling deal. There is a real possibility that many poor Americans will end up bankrupt and homeless because of medical bills and therefore on the streets, where inevitably, some of them will die. This is a terrible thing.
After reading their pamphlet however; it does not seem like those are the dying Americans they were referring to. Their rhetoric points more to something like an armed uprising killing innocent civilians. You might not agree, but that's how it reads to me.
And now, back to "Obama=Hitler." Really? Let's take a look at a few descrepencies with this line of thought.
1. President Obama is not a mass murderer.
2. President Obama is not an anti-semite.
3. President Obama is a black man. Come on...
4. President Obama is the President of a two party representative democracy, not the dictator of a single party autocracy.
5. President Obama is accountable to the Congress and the Supreme Court. Hitler seized unilateral power with the passage of the
1933 Enabling Act which gave him essentially unlimited and unchecked dictatorial power.
6. President Obama is a Democrat. A moderate, centrist Democrat, but a Democrat none the less. The Democratic Party is the more left wing of the two parties in this country. Nazis were as far to the right wing as anyone to hold power in any large civilized country has ever been. Confusing.
All of that said however; they did hand me a
flyer calling for the return of the
Glass-Steagal Act of 1933. Their flyer had this to say:
The Time for Bullshit Must End: It’s Glass-Steagall or Die
July 26, 2011 • 1:55PM
Despite all of the crazy contained in the above paragraphs, re-instating Glass-Steagal is a fabulous idea. The separation of deposit and investment banks between the 1930s and the 1990s forced banks to keep themselves in check and helped the coutnry avoid the kind of financial disaster we're dealing with today.
I must say, I wasn't surprised to see the Hitler poster. What I was surprised to see was advocacy for a return to Glass-Steagal, which is very important and the kind of thing that those of us of the left can hardly believe was ever repealed in the first place. You did a great job with that one, Clinton and Bob Rubin! So the LaRouchites are as crazy as ever, but as with almost anyone there is some common sense policy buried under the batshit insanity.
Selah.
The fact that this article 
