LGF:
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Maddow digs (a little more than most mainstream news shows) into the people and organizations driving the recent outbreak of anti-Muslim hysteria.
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Tag Archives: Ground Zero mosque
Time to take a stand
Evan’s Blog. Meh.
Re: The “Ground Zero” Mosque
[...] America was not attacked. ”America” was attacked. And the proxy was New York and Washington, DC. Alaska was not attacked. Alabama was not attacked. Mississippi was not attacked. Arizona was not attacked. Minnesota was not attacked.
I am tired of people using what happened to my city as the basis for their hate. I am tired of people so fundamentally misinterpreting our Constitution and Bill of Rights. I am tired of people turning the word “Muslim” into the word “terrorist.”
We are coming dangerously close to a point in our history where those who died on D-Day and are buried in French soil at Normandy died for naught. Those men saved my dad. Those men defeated a tyrant. Those men died to ensure others could have the freedoms it is so often said we take for granted. It is our duty, our most important job as citizens, to make sure their sacrifice continues to be for the cause of freedom, justice and acceptance.
We need to take a stand. We need to stop this madness. I will fight to protect what America stands for at all costs. If I have to stand in front of that Mosque with a shotgun so young Muslim children can safely pray to their God, I will. We are allowing a scary and dangerous faction to control the course of our society. If it takes force to stop them, then this is what we must do. The stakes are too high. It is time rational people took a stand. It is time Americans took a stand.
Imaginary outrage
“An enormously complex and emotional issue — but ultimately the right thing to do. A president is president for every citizen, including every Muslim citizen. Obama is correct that the way to marginalize radicalism is to respect the best traditions of Islam and protect the religious liberty of Muslim Americans. It is radicals who imagine an American war on Islam. But our conflict is with the radicals alone,” – Michael Gerson, former speech-writer for George W. Bush.
Amen to every bit of that. What the right’s demagoguery on the Cordoba mosque really represents is a lack of seriousness in the war on terror. They are playing right into the Jihadists’ hands.
Did Obama “walk back” his comments from Friday night?
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Greg Sargent:
The media is mostly framing this story as: Did Obama “endorse” the project or didn’t he? That’s an overly simplistic framing, but you work with the media you have, not the one you want.
President Obama was asked by reporters today if he had an opinion on the “wisdom” of building the Cordoba House two blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center, and replied:
“I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding,” Obama told reporters Saturday after delivering remarks in Panama City Beach, Fla. “That’s what our country is about.”
So, of course, now right wing bloggers are crowing that Obama is “walking back” his earlier statement; but I don’t see that at all. Obama is emphasizing that his remarks were meant to support the Constitution — which should be enough for anyone. The idea that it’s somehow “unwise” to build this project is a concept promoted by opponents, and it’s irrelevant to the Constitutional issue; it would have been neither appropriate nor productive for Obama to wade into that poisoned debate.
Update:
Nice Work if You Can Get It | John Cole:
I was shocked when I read this morning that President Obama had defended the Islamic Center. I was proud as hell of him, but for the life of me I couldn’t understand why he did it. As I wrote to a friend earlier today, “this President doesn’t do ‘controversial.’” Sadly, I was right. The President has now backed away from his comments of last night, claiming that they weren’t intended to show support for the Islamic Center. When they clearly were.
This tickles me to no end. Aravosis misinterprets Obama’s remarks, and when he finally figures out what Obama said, he flames Obama for changing his position.
This is why we made the manic progressive tag.
Just a bunch of anti-American, terrorist-loving Socialists
Religious leaders are hinting that Palin and Gingrich are xenophobic, religious bigots? It must be the end times!
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More than 40 prominent Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders and religion scholars issued a statement today condemning the “xenophobia and religious bigotry” fueling the increasingly strident opposition to a proposed Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero. These leaders from New York City and across the country are specifically challenging the divisive rhetoric of Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, who have strongly opposed a center that will promote interfaith relations, combat extremism, and offer community programs for Americans of all religious backgrounds.
“Let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.” President Obama
How about them apples? I know he’s a secret Kenyan Nazi Maoist Muslim and all, but I hope this goes a long way towards settling this issue on the right note. Glenn Greenwald reacts:
This is one of the most impressive and commendable things Obama has done since being inaugurated… What makes this particularly commendable is there is virtually no political gain to be had from doing it, and substantial political risk. Polls shows overwhelming opposition to the mosque nationwide (close to 70% opposed), and that’s true even in New York, where an extraordinary “50% of Democrats, 74% of Republicans, and 52% of ‘non-enrolled’ voters, don’t want to see the mosque built.”
Go read the rest — he’s got quotes from Wingnut Central too.
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Morning in the bunker
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- Red State Update: Is the Tea Party racist? (video)
- (Think Progress) – Colorado Tea Party candidate Ken Buck on abortion: “I don’t believe in the exceptions of rape or incest.” Buck’s extremist stance may help him regain favor with his far-right supporters, some of whom he recently got into trouble with when he called them “dumbass” birthers.
- (Jeffrey Goldberg) – The Cordoba Initiative, which is headed by an imam named Feisal Abdul Rauf, is an enemy of al Qaeda, no less than Rudolph Giuliani and the Anti-Defamation League are enemies of al Qaeda. Bin Laden would sooner dispatch a truck bomb to destroy the Cordoba Initiative’s proposed community center than he would attack the ADL, for the simple reason that Osama’s most dire enemies are Muslims.
- (NY Times) – GOOD NEWS: The government is expected to announce on Wednesday that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.
- (Greg Sargent) – Pew Research just released a new poll finding that more than twice as many Americans see a Palin endorsement as a negative for a Congressional candidate than view it as a positive. Sargent summarizes, “she’s successfully tightening her emotional grip on her devoted legions of supporters at the expense of just about everyone else. Far more see [Palin] as a turn-off than as a turn-on.”
- (Reuters) – Barnes & Noble, the number one U.S. book store chain, is putting itself up for sale as business suffers in the high-stakes battle for a leading role in the digital books market.
- (NYTimes) – 2.4 million more [Americans] became obese from 2007 to 2009, bringing the total to 72.5 million, or 26.7 percent of the population. The numbers are part of a continuing and ominous trend. The nine states with obesity rates of 30 percent or more are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia. The highest rate, 34.4 percent, was in Mississippi.
Lamestream automated systems and their gotcha processes
via Politico: Facebook looking into deletion of Palin mosque post
“We’re investigating this incident to determine whether the content in question was removed by an automated system as a result of user reports that it violated our terms. We want Facebook to be a place where people can openly discuss issues and express their views while respecting the rights and feelings of others. The goal of our policies is to strike a very delicate balance between giving people the freedom to express their opinions and viewpoints — even those that may be controversial to some — and maintaining a safe and trusted environment.”
UPDATE: Noyes emails with an update:
“The note in question did not violate our content standards but was removed by an automated system. We’re always working to improve our processes and we apologize for any inconvenience this caused.”
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Related: Report Sarah Palin on FB
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Report Sarah Palin on FB
Click image below & then click “Report Note”
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Moneyries: Help Report Sarah Palin’s Ground Zero mosque note to Facebook for being “Racist/Hate Speech.” Click-through to do it.
What she says in that note, in part:
Earlier today, Mayor Bloomberg responded to my comments about the planned mosque at Ground Zero by suggesting that a decision not to allow the building of a mosque at that sacred place would somehow violate American principles of tolerance and openness.
No one is disputing that America stands for – and should stand for – religious tolerance. It is a foundation of our republic. This is not an issue of religious tolerance but of common moral sense. To build a mosque at Ground Zero is a stab in the heart of the families of the innocent victims of those horrific attacks…
Many Americans, myself included, feel it would be an intolerable and tragic mistake to allow such a project sponsored by such an individual to go forward on such hallowed ground. This is nothing close to “religious intolerance,” it’s just common decency.
Charles Johnson:
…what [Palin] really wants to say: Muslims shouldn’t have the same constitutional rights as other Americans.
…And believe it or not, there are families of 9/11 victims who are not opposed to the community center two blocks from Ground Zero (it’s not “at” Ground Zero, no matter how many times Palin repeats that lie). Sarah Palin takes it on herself to speak for all of these families, but she has no moral right to do so.
When the World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed by Al Qaeda, some of the innocent victims that day were also Muslims. But in Palin’s netherworld of fear and hate, they simply don’t count.
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UPDATE: Lamestream automated systems and their gotcha processes
— a Facebook automated process had taken down Palin’s post earlier today!
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Refudiate Sarah Palin’s refudiation
Two good points on what’s really important about Palin’s newest attention-getting “stupid thing” and the Ground Zero mosque. It’s not the fictional word she used:
It should be pointed out (again) that the “Ground Zero mosque” these idiots are ranting about is actually a proposed community center with an auditorium, swimming pool, and restaurants, in addition to a mosque. It would be housed in an existing 13-story building that’s two blocks away from Ground Zero and has no view of the area; there are two very big buildings in between the proposed community center and Ground Zero. Here is an embedded Google Map in which you can clearly see that the idea of this being a “Ground Zero mosque” is a ridiculous paranoid fantasy.
I wonder what wingnuts like Sarah Palin would say if anyone suggested dismantling fundamentalist churches near the site of an abortion clinic bombing. Considering how they lost their shpadoinkle when DHS released a “Right-Wing Extremism” report, I would imagine their heads would explode.
Or what if security officials began to profile white, conservative, Christian males who wanted to visit the Holocaust Museum? Or any government facilities in Oklahoma City.
Where would the failed VP candidate, half-term governor be without her pseudo-outrage over non-issues?
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Related: Sarah Palin: the Shakespeare of Twitter
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