But!  If everyone was armed, we wouldn't have these problems!11!

...he probably knows about Judaism more than any other president, because he read about it - and wondered how come no one asks Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner or Senate minority leader Mitch McConnel about their support to Israel.  

This policy had two aims: first, to prevent Polish elites from organizing resistance or from ever regrouping into a governing class; second, to exploit Poland's leaderless, less educated majority of peasants and workers as unskilled laborers in agriculture and industry.

Hitler's hatred of the Poles was certainly not reserved just for the Jews, but rather the Poles as a people.  His intent was the total destruction of Polish culture as a whole.  

I have issued the command and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by firing squad-that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness--for the present only in the East--with orders to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space that we need.

If you lived in Poland during that time, it didn't matter if you were Catholic or Jewish, chances are your life was very much at risk and not just from helping your neighbor.  And yet, there are countless stories passed down from generation to generation of people doing just that.  

"Entrance is forbidden to Poles, Jews, and dogs."--signs posted outside public places.  We were all targets.

I've been over several times myself and it always feels like home.  It never fails that I'll have some one come up to me and start speaking to me like I truly am a native at least once a day.  Must be those strong Polish genes!  If I didn't have my health problems, I most likely would have moved over there years ago.  

I've been to a good number of the camps, including in Germany when I was 18 (Buchenwald and Dachau).  It is, as you say, impossible to put into words.  From the displays of the personal belonging taken to the smell of burning flesh that persists to this day, it is impossible to describe or fully comprehend the horrors that man is capable of.  

But there are also the camps.

For their part, Republicans really haven't initially been on the right side of much of anything in American history since the days of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.

They were ardent imperialists in the 1890s, and conspired to overthrow Queen Liliuokalani and her government and annex the Hawaiian Kingdom. They sought to annex Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines during ther Spanish American War, and plunged this country into a bloody colonial war with Filipino revolutionaries who sought independence.

They opposed U.S. entry into the First World War, and then sabotaged President Wilson by refusing to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, plunging the country back into a near-fatal policy of isolationism.

Their rabid isolationism in the early days of the Second World War has already been discussed breifly above and earlier, and need not be recounted in detail here.

Sadly, most Republicans in Congress during the 1947-48 session even opposed the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan in post-World War II Europe, and the president's order to desegregate U.S. armed forces. It was the few intellectuals like Sen. Arthur Vanderberg who, to their infinite credit, ignored their own party's rabble and reached across the aisle to help Pres. Truman put in place the cornerstones of American Cold War policy.

Only afterward, when Democratic initiatives and policies prove successful, do they step forward and brazenly try to garner the lion's share of credit for themselves, as though it was somehow their idea all along (see Romney, Mitt and Detroit).

It's worth considering that the MS St. Louis incident you cite happened in May 1939, not during the Second World War itself. Please remember that very few Americans in 1939 were concerned with the forboding events in Europe and were predominatly isolationist.

Further, given their bitter experience during the First World War 20 years earlier and the fact that the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles, American citizens in 1939 were generally quite hostile to the notion that they should provide haven to Jewish refugees from Germany. From a domestic political standpoint, FDR would've faced a tremendous amount of opposition has he offered them asylum.

You're right. In retrospect, none of the major Allied powers come out of the Second World War looking all that moral and upstanding. But then, hindsight is always 20 / 20, isn't it?

"Interesting times, late 30's & early 40's. my father was a Polish Jewish Intern in Lintz, then Salzburg. He was the only one of his very large, extended family who escaped Hitler right before the Invasion in `39 ("Blitzkrieg.") he was a great thinker and saw what was coming. He begged and begged his family to come with him but, like many Poles at that time, they thought Hitler was a joke and that the Polish Army would have no problem repelling the "little Corporal."

Trujillo was known for his open-door policy, accepting Jewish refugees from Europe, Japanese migration during the 1930s, and exiles from Spain following its civil war.

 At the 1938 Evian Conference the Dominican Republic was the only country willing to accept many Jews and offered to accept up to 100,000 refugees on generous terms.[11] In 1940 an agreement was signed and Trujillo donated 26,000 acres (110 km2) of his properties for settlements.

At least, that's how Stephanie Cutter framed it the other day:


"This is a gubernatorial race with a guy who was recalled and a challenger trying get him out of office. It has nothing to do with President Obama at the top of the ticket and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with Mitt Romney at the top of the Republican ticket," said Cutter on MSNBC's "Daily Rundown."

[snip]

Cutter also defended the president's role in trying to defeat Walker, after Obama received criticism for not doing enough to help Wisconsin Democrats.

"I think that people on the ground are looking at the significant resources that we are putting into that race," Cutter said.

Cutter pointed to on-the-ground organizational support, providing Obama for America resources and raising money for Walker's rival as the ways in which the Obama team is influencing the recall effort.

The Obama campaign released a statement endorsing Barrett immediately after his primary victory two weeks ago, but the president has not spoken publicly about the race, nor has he visited the state to campaign for Walker's Democratic rival.


"If you think that the secret weapon here is sending President Obama, then I'm pleased that you believe that, but I think that actually having people organizing and volunteering and turning out the vote and doing everything they can that actually effect an election is more powerful," Cutter added.

Wasserman-Schultz also insists that the DNC has been supportive of the recall and has given money to the effort.

On a serious note, it irks me that a library would ban this book because it's all about s-e-x, but likely has on its shelves books filled with violence and gore.  I know, because I've read some of them - Jeffrey Deaver, Michael Connelly, Harlen Coben, John Sandford, to name just a few.  Shoot, if they can ban a book because it's a "primer" on bondage/domination, why not ban all the murder and crime books because they are primers on how to kill people?