A Nutter-And-A-Half Named Harry

Now, I'll admit that I didn't witness it firsthand (I have read the transcript and watched the replay). Nor did I catch this on Hugh's show when it was first on. (See, in Arizona, we get Hugh's show from 4pm to 5pm, then Liddy and Hill come on until 8pm when the station airs the last two hours of Hugh's show. I think this is retarded, but I don't make those decisions. The station manager does, and his word is final.) I went lay down earlier this afternoon. Today was a long day, and I wasn't feeling too good. I woke up around nine just in time to catch this on Hugh Hewitt's show.

Wolf Blitzer: The "new Gestapo." You know, those are powerful words, calling an agency of the US government, the Department of Homeland Security, with what about 300,000 federal employees, the new Gestapo. Do you want to take that back?

HB: No not really. I stand by my remarks. I am very much aware of what this has provoked in our national community, and I welcome the opportunity for us to begin to have a dialouge, that goes other than where we have been having one up until now. People feel that I talk in extremes, but if you look at what's happening to American citizens, a lot is going on in the extreme. We've taken citizens from this country, without the right to be charged, without being told what they are taken for, we have spoirited them out of this country, taken them to faraway places, and reports come back with some consistency that they are being tortured, they are not being told why, what they have done, and even some who have been released have come back and testified to this fact.

WB: But let me interrupt for a second. Are you familiar and I am sure you are because you are an intelligent man, what the Gestapo did to the Jews in World War II.

HB:: Absolutely.

WB: And you think that what the Department of Homeland Security is doing to some US citizens suspected of terrorism is similar to what the Nazis did to the Jews?

HB: Well, if you are taking people out of the country, and spiriting them someplace else, and they are being tortured, and they are being charged or not being charged so they will know what it is that they have done, it may not have been directly inside the, inside the Department of Homeland Security, but the pattern, the system, it is what the system does, it is what all thses different divisions have begun to reveal in their collective. I mean, my phones are tapped, my mail can be opened. They don't even need a court warrant to come and do that as we once were required to do.

WB: But no one has taken you or anyone else as far as I can tell to an extermination camp and by the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, even millions decided to kill them which is what the Nazis did.

HB: Mr. Blitzer, let me say this to you. Perhaps, just perhaps, if the Jews of Germany and people spoken out much earlier and had resisted the tyranny that was on the horizon, perhaps we would never have had Adolph Hitler and the Gestapo.

First question I have for Mr. Blitzer is, as the son of Holocaust survivors, why did you let this ass ramble on, and basically blame the Holocaust on the Jews' inability to act? Second, the number you're shooting for in terms of those killed in the Holocaust were around six million Jews, and approximately eight to ten million others. Third, if those in the Dept. of Homeland Security are like the Gestapo, why do we still have the rights we possessed yesterday, last week, last month, last year, or ten years ago? It makes no sense to hold a protest in DC today over the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and not have the US "Gestapo" break it up. I don't see the Dept. of Homeland Security breaking down doors and dragging Muslims away in the middle of the night.

Belafonte also made the insinuation that we're transporting US citizens to other countries for torture and interrogation. First of all, no US citizen has been transported to any foreign country via rendition flights. These are all illegal, foreign combatants. And I seriously doubt his phones are tapped, or his mail has been read. And the last time I checked, Mr. Belafonte, a warrant is still needed before a search of a US citizen can commence.

Hugh remarked that he has only cut one interview off due to nutter comments in the past, and he stated that if he were in Wlof Blitzer's shoes, this would have been the second interview he would have cut off. I agree. Idiots like Harry Belafonte shouldn't be given the air to spout lies and wacky conspiracy theories. This was CNN, not the Art Bell show. And I shame CNN for allowing this nut on, and granting him any sort of relevance. He knows nothing about what he's talking about. Further, he knows nothing of the history in regard Nazi Germany. I suggest two books for him to bring himself up to speed. "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" and "Mein Kampf." Both books will give someone the necessities needed to understand Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi Regime. Until then, he's as asinine as Michael Moore and Dick Durbin; Durbin being the only elected official stupid enough to equate the US and it's military to the Nazi thugs of the past.

Wolf Blitzer should be ashamed that he had this interview. It's a discredit to the plight of his parents during World War II. And CNN should issue an apology for having Belafonte on. Let him go to Venenzuala, Bolivia, or Cuba and give his rants. But this shouldn't be on our TV sets; the quotes should not be given air time on the radio. The only reason they were was because of how insanely and utterly outrageous they were. If living in America is such a problem for Mr. Belafonte, we'd be happy to help him pack and move elsewhere. Hell, I'd be willing to pick up the tab provided he never return.

If nothing else, Sen. Durbin now has a lunch buddy he can hang out with, and can relate to.

Publius II