In my continuing coverage of Republican racism and anti-Semitism, one of the stupidest Republican memes was "gee, uh, duh, isn't Obama a Moooslim?"

My first reaction was "so what if he was?" Why couldn't a Muslim be an American leader? But that is beside the point. There has never, ever been the slightest evidence that Obama was Muslim.

Those who listen to this lie and believe it are, quite honestly, abyssmally stupid or amazingly gullible.

But who originated the "duh...Obama is a Moooslim" lie?

Seems an unstable anti-Semite, named Andy Martin, started it. And Fox News let this unstable anti-Semite assert lies without questioning him...yet another connection between Fox News, lies, and anti-Semitism.

I guess this is a sign that the right wing is abandoning all hope of attracting the Jewish vote. Their racism has alienated the black and Hispanic vote they have claimed to be wooing. Now, by showing their willingness to exploit anti-Semitic stereotypes, Fox News shows the right wing has given up on Jewish voters.

So recently the New York Times reported that Fox News is seeing its ratings plunge. Of course this is fact based on commonly used data.

Fox News, always unwilling to accept unpleasant facts, decided to vilify the reporters who wrote the story. Cause you see, Fox News can't face the fact that their audience is shrinking fast, so they have to blame someone else. But what is really revealing is how they choose to do it. They altered photos of the journalists who reported on the Fox News ratings plunge. In particular, they altered the image of Jacques Steinberg into a grotesque caricature of Jewish stereotypes. From Media Matters:

The odds were 10:3. A mob, one of whom had been involved with racist attacks on blacks in the past, attacked three Jews for having the NERVE to wish them "Happy Hanukkah" in response to "Merry Christmas." This occurred on the NYC subway, well within a part of the world considered more or less free of such stupid bigotry. But the ten bigots who mobbed the Jews for wishing them "Happy Hanukkah" included a woman who was the perfect illustration of the stupidity such bigots embrace when she referred to Hanukkah as the day Jews celebrate the killing of Christ.

Hanukkah, of course, pre-dated the birth of Christ by some 200 years, and represented the success of Jewish rebellion against the Syrian Greeks.

Reporting on this a bit late...this happened a week ago, but slipped my mind until reminded of it by an email from the Anti-Defamation League

According to the FBI, hate crimes are on the rise again, up nearly 8% in 2006. This month a particularly nasty group of bigots in New York City attacked four Jews on the subway because those Jews had the unmittigated NERVE to say "Happy Hanukkah."

From Haaretz:

On [December 7th], Four Jewish subway riders who wished other people Happy Hanukkah were pelted with anti-Semitic remarks before being beaten, New York police and prosecutors said.

The incident was being investigated as a possible hate crime.

The four were on a train in Manhattan on Friday night, during the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights, when they were approached by a group of 10 people who offered holiday greetings. The victims responded, Happy Hanukkah and were assaulted by the larger group, police said Tuesday.

I didn't know this but last week was self-proclaimed "Islamo-facism awareness week," a right wing intolerance fest dreamed up by extremists Ann Coulter and David Horowitz. I only know that these fools were strutting around advocating intolerance because of an email I got from the organization Jews on First.

There is something so disgusting about the right wing fear of just about everything that isn't white, male, Protestant Christian. Ann Coulter is the perfect example of this. When we hear her condemning so-called Islamo-fascism, let's remember that she is the idiot who said right after 9/11 that:

"We should invade their [Muslim's] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

And what did she choose to advocate during her "Islamo-facism awareness week?" Anti-Semitism. Yes, she attacks Jews as part of her paranoia against Islam. Last week she told Donny Deutsch:

"we should throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians."

Ann Coulter also claimed that Christians want Jews "to be perfected" by converting to Christianity.

A reader sent me this some time ago, but never got around to writing about it. Now it seems that the military is trying to queitly sweep it under the carpet, but the group Jews on First, the organization that broke the story about the Delaware Pogrom, has taken up the issue.

It seems that chaplains at Ft. Levinworth were giving lessons with anti-Semitic messages. And this is where our tax money is going!

Truthout ran the story a few days ago.

At the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Army base, military chaplains have been holding Bible classes for US soldiers using study guides that appear to be anti-Semitic.