Look me straight in the monitor and tell me you think that’s why, that you really believe its about propriety and tradition.
“Well, this guys got his ass hanging in the wind, and I could help him out like he helped me out, but, shucks, tradition.” You buy that?
Yes.
Just wait for W to say anything about anything. Butthurt Luci and the Butthurt Brigade will come storming in, crying about how the immediate past chief should keep his mouth shut in accordance with tradition.
Never seen anyone be unconvincingly snotty before. Its like you can hit the notes but still can’t sing the song.
Please mark me down for “Bwuh?” Thank you. You got the munchies, dude?
Normally I shy away from me-too posts, but as I engage in an email exchange with my Arizona-conservative uncle in which I attempt to deconstruct an anti-Obama conspiracy theorist screed, let me chime into this thread to say I agree with Shodan and Rand Rover on their respective points.
Yes, Obama should have made his personal position clear or else kept his mouth shut from the get-go, as I have no respect for half-answers no matter who’s giving them; and no, the First Amendment does not obligate the government to protect members of a given class from others disliking them.
Ugh, now I’m feeling all centrist and shit. As a civil libertarian, this compels me to go take a shower.
Well, of course not! Its about denying them the rights of other citizens on the basis of that dislike. And, yes, the government is so obligated as to protect the unpopular. We all are, if we are true to out stated values.
And I can see the point of his caution. I would just love to see this thing resolve into an utter national repudiation of the whole Islamic hate thing. Nothing could please me more.
But what I see worries me, shit like this gets out of hand damned quck and damned easy. It can’t be a good thing to push ahead with this only to establish the nations number one target for batshit commandoes. What good is a community center that the community is afraid to go to?
I wonder, is hallowedness like radiation, if you are twice as far away you get half the hallowed rays? How far away would it have to be before it was at an acceptable distance?
But I digress. Best solution may be to find another location outside of the Zone of Holiness. A better, more accessible, larger site, with the difference in expense made up from donations from America’s religious communities. Smoke that, Bin Laden.
You might enjoy this article. It may seem amazing after-the-fact, but they didn’t even see this kind of hate-filled objection coming.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/nyregion/11mosque.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
The even bigger irony is, not only has the Burlington Coat Factory not owned or used that building in years, but this same Imam has been holding services in that building for the past year without a peep from the community, let alone the nation as a whole.
Now they want to expand it from just a Muslim prayer center to a Community Center with a gym, swimming pool, basketball courts, auditorium, culinary school, restaurant, library, meeting rooms, and a September 11th memorial and meditation center, amongst other amenities, and all of a sudden, it’s only referred to as a mosque and the location has been magically moved to “hallowed ground” at ground zero. It’s supposedly a “slap in the face of 9/11 families”, yet they pretend that the group “September 11 Families for a Peaceful Tomorrow” don’t exist, let alone support this project.
And every argument you knock down with truth, they come back with something even more ridiculous. The Imam won’t open his books to show who’s financing this project (terrorists, don’tchaknow), he wants to slowly infiltrate the U.S. until Muslims can take over our government by introducing Shariah law, it’s not a Community Center, it’s a Tribute to a location they’ve conquered, as they’ve been known to do throughout history, and on and on and on.
The people objecting to this are the dumbest, most contemptible fucks I have ever had the displeasure of coming across.
Ah ha! Sufis! Was there ever such a blood-crazed, violent cult as the Sufis?
These things work with the square of the distance, so it would be one-fourth the sacredness at twice the distance.
So two blocks away we’re talking what, 200, maybe 300 milliReagans tops ?
Hell, a radical lefty would need irony shielding at least .6 hicks thick, or my skin would blister.
Why does Obama get involved in local issues? this flap reminds me of the Gates incident (“The Cambridge Police Behaved Stupidly”-Obama seems to have a knack for shooting off his mouth, without checking the facts first.
i don’t get it-this guy is supposed to be intelligent-he seems to lack the political instincts of your average Chicago ward boss.
Why didn’t he say something like: "This is a local matter, for the City Government of new York to decide…and leave it at that? Nope, he makes a fool out of himself…again.
Because it’s become a major national controversy and he’s the president.
Or IS HE???
All right then. Since we agree this is a local matter, howsabout the vocal antagonists from the other 49 states shut the fuck up about it, 'kay ? 'Kay.
This place is ‘hallowed ground’? Really?
Have you been there? Have you seen the street vendors selling the tackiest of souvenirs to ‘pilgrims’. This place is no more hallowed than any other place in NYC where people died horribly and that is plenty of places.
How dare they build a school where the triangle shirt waist factory fire happened!
How dare they still use Wall Street after it was bombed by terrorists!
How dare they run the Chinatown buses where George Washington lived when he was the first President of the United States. (never mind, we built a bridge on his house)
Interestingly enough, they continued to use the WTC itself after 'Merkins died in the '93 bombing.
I would be perfectly happy if we deported all those vendors back to Tackystan.
New Jersey?