This is an update post from an email:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

I got from my fundie brother-in-law spouting off that Barack Obama was a "clown" for not putting his hand over his heart for the national anthem and ridiculing his middle name, "Hussein". While I get a lot of these "spam" emails from him, this one really hit a nerve. I wanted to fire off a "fuck-you idiot," however, this would only start a bigger riff between us and it wouldn't do anything to help educate him on his ignorance.

But this morning, I received a response from one of those who was "spammed" by this too. It was one of the best responses to this type of crap and I wanted to share it with you. For those like me who need help coming up with the right words for these "clowns" this is definitely a keeper!

Here it is:

"clown" & "Hussein" ?
Shameful Shameful,
This man is my friend, please take me off of these type of list.

Also, FYI Only as a way of helping read the following and be even more
..informed:




At Cincinnati, Bill Cunningham, according to the LAT, who "introduced
presidential candidate John McCain at a rally here today accused
Barack Obama of sympathizing with 'world leaders who want to kill us'
and invoked Obama's middle name -- three times calling him 'Barack
Hussein Obama.' " John McCain repudiated Cunningham's low tactics and
said that using the middle name like that three times was
"inappropriate" and would never happen again at one of his rallies.

I want to say something about Barack Hussein Obama's name. It is a
name to be proud of. It is an American name. It is a blessed name. It
is a heroic name, as heroic and American in its own way as the name of
General Omar Nelson Bradley or the name of Benjamin Franklin. And
denigrating that name is a form of racial and religious bigotry of the
most vile and debased sort. It is a prejudice against names deriving
from Semitic languages!

Christian, Western heroes have often been bequeathed Middle Eastern
names. Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, the medieval Spanish hero, carried the
name El Cid, from the Arabic al-Sayyid, "the lord."

Barack and Hussein are Semitic words. Americans have been named with
Semitic names since the founding of the Republic. Fourteen of our 43
presidents have had Semitic names (see below). And, American English
contains many Arabic-derived words that we use every day and without
which we would be much impoverished. America is a world civilization
with a world heritage, something Cunninghamism will never understand.

Barack is a Semitic word meaning "to bless" as a verb or "blessing" as
a noun. In its Hebrew form, barak, it is found all through the Bible.
It first occurs in Genesis 1:22: "And God blessed them, saying, Be
fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl
multiply in the earth."

Here is a list of how many times barak appears in each book of the Bible.

Now let us take the name "Hussein." It is from the Semitic word,
hasan, meaning "good" or "handsome." Husayn is the diminutive,
affectionate form.

Barack Obama's middle name is in honor of his grandfather, Hussein, a
secular resident of Nairobi. Americans may think of Saddam Hussein
when they hear the name, but that is like thinking of Stalin when you
hear the name Joseph. There have been lots of Husseins in history,
from the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, a hero who touched the
historian Gibbon, to King Hussein of Jordan, one of America's most
steadfast allies in the 20th century. The author of the beloved
American novel, The Kite Runner, is Khaled Hosseini.

But in Obama's case, it is just a reference to his grandfather.

It is worth pointing out that John McCain's adopted daughter, Bridget,
is originally from Bangladesh. Since Hussein is a very common name in
Bangladesh, it is entirely possible that her birth father or
grandfather was named Hussein. McCain certainly has Muslim relatives
via adoption in his family. If Muslim relatives are a disqualification
from high office in the United States, then McCain himself is in
trouble. In fact, since Bridget is upset that George W. Bush doesn't
like her "because she is black," and used her to stop the McCain
campaign in South Carolina in 2000, you understand why McCain would be
especially sensitive to race-baiting of Cunningham's sort. The
question is how vigorously he will combat it; he hasn't been above
Muslim-taunting in the campaign so far. (And, the McCains really
should let Bridget know that she is Asian, not "black." The poor girl;
Bush and Rove have done a number on her, and Cindy's confusion can't
help.)

The other thing to say about grandfathers named Hussein is that very
large numbers of African-Americans probably have an ancestor ten or
eleven generations ago with that name, in what is now Mali or Senegal
or Nigeria. And, since so many thousands of Arab Muslims were made to
convert to Catholicism in Spain after 1501, many Latinos have distant
ancestors named Hussein, too. In fact, since there was a lot of
Arab-Spanish intermarriage, and since there was subsequent Spanish
intermarriage with other European Catholics, more European Americans
are descended from a Hussein than they realize. The British royal
family is quite forthright about the Arab line in their ancestry going
back to Andalusia.

Obama, being a cousin of Dick Cheney on one side and having relatives
in Kenya on the other, is just more and more typical of the 21st
century United States.

So, anyway, Obama's first two names mean "Blessing, the Good." If we
are lucky enough to get him for president, we can only hope that his
names are prophetic for us.

Which brings me to Omar Bradley. Omar is an alternative spelling of
Umar, i.e. Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph of Sunni Islam.
Presumably General Bradley was named for the poet Omar Khayyam, who
bore the caliph's name. Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, in the "translation"
of Edward FitzGerald, became enormously popular in Victorian America.

Gen. Omar Bradley, who bore a Semitic, Muslim first name, and shared
it with the second Caliph of Sunni Islam, was the hero of D-Day and
Normandy, of the Battle of the Bulge and the Ruhr.

Would Mr. Cunningham see Omar Bradley as un-American, as an enemy
because of his name?

What about other American heroes, such as Gen. George Joulwan, former
NATO Supreme Allied Commander of Europe? "Joulwan" is an Arabic name.
Or there is Gen. John Abizaid, former CENTCOM commander. Abizaid is an
Arabic name. Abi means Abu or "father of," and Zaid is a common Arab
first name. Is Cunningham good enough to wipe their shoes? Is he going
to call them traitors because they have Arabic names?

What about Congressman Darrell Issa of California? ("`Isa" means Jesus
in Arabic). Former cabinet secretary Donna Shalala? (Shalala means
"waterfall" in Arabic).

I won't go into all the great Americans with Arabic names in sports,
entertainment and business, against whom Cunningham would apparently
discriminate on that basis. Does he want to take citizenship away from
Kareem Abdul Jabbar and
Ahmad Jamal ? What about Rihanna
<"sweet basil," "aromatic">? Tony Shalhoub ?

Let us take Benjamin Franklin. His first name is from the Hebrew Bin
Yamin, the son of the Right (hand), or son of strength, or the son of
the South (yamin or right has lots of connotations). The "Bin" means
"son of," just as in modern colloquial Arabic. Bin Yamin Franklin is
not a dishonorable name because of its Semitic root. By the way, there
are lots of Muslims named Bin Yamin.

As for an American president bearing a name derived from a Semitic
language, that is hardly unprecedented.

John Adams really only had Semitic names. His first name is from the
Hebrew Yochanan, or gift of God, which became Johan and then John. (In
German and in medieval English, "y" is represented by "j" but was
originally pronounced "y".) Adams is from the biblical Adam, which
also just means "human being." In Arabic, one way of saying "human
being" is "Bani Adam," the children of men.

Thomas Jefferson's first name is from the Aramaic Tuma, meaning
"twin." Aramaic is a Semitic language spoken by Jesus, which is
related to Hebrew and Arabic. In Arabic twin is tau'am, so you can see
the similarity.

James Madison, James Monroe and James Polk all had a Semitic first
name, derived from the Hebrew Ya'aqov or Jacob, which is Ya`qub in
Arabic. It became Iacobus in Latin, then was corrupted to Iacomus, and
from there became James in English.

Zachary Taylor's first name is from the Hebrew Zachariah, which means
"the Lord has remembered."

Abraham Lincoln, of course is, named for the patriarch Abraham, from
the Semitic word for father, Ab, and the word for "multitude," raham,.
Abu, "father of," is a common element in Arab names today.

So, Mr. Cunningham, Barack Hussein Obama fits right in this list of
presidents with Semitic names. In fact, we haven't had one for a
while. We are due for another one.

A blessed and good one.