9/11 happened to us all

Nothing more needs to be said.



via Cesca

Ground Zero mosque hypocrisy from the GOP, Tea Party and Fox News

Yesterday, Fox News ran this map showing the proximity of the Park 51 center to the location where remains were found after 9/11.


The implication is simple - this is sacred ground where no mosque should be built. Of course, the hosts of Fox and Friends didn't imply anything. To them, this was a simple matter of right and wrong and all Americans should be opposed mad insulted OUTRAGED.

However...

I took this map from McClatchy D.C. and overlaid it with this map from the N.Y. Post, which was the source of the Fox map, and this is what I got.



What I got was hypocrisy. According to Fox and most of conservative America, it's wrong to build a mosque near Ground Zero because it's sacred ground. I have no argument with the special place that ground holds in the hearts of millions. My issue is that it is apparently OK with the right to have a Burger King, a strip club, a betting parlor and it's doubly OK to have plans to build a strip mall, with a McDonald's, ON the remains of the trade center towers. But it's not OK for our fellow Americans to build a place of worship. And please be correct, they are not Muslims trying to build that mosque, they are Muslim-Americans.

"I’ve got Muslims who are fighting in Afghanistan in the uniform of the United States armed services. They’re out there putting their lives on the line for us, and we’ve got to make sure that we are crystal clear, for our sakes and their sakes, they are Americans, and we honor their service. And part of honoring their service is making sure that they understand that we don’t differentiate between them and us. It’s just us. And that is a principle that I think is — is — is going to be very important for us to — to sustain. And I think tomorrow is an excellent time for us to — to reflect on that."

President Obama

So which is it? Is it sacred ground? If so, there shouldn't be any strip clubs or crass tourism or fast food. But you can't logically justify a titty bar where human remains were found. But since when has the right been logical? For them, it's all black-and-white (often literally), right-and-wrong.

However, consider this quote from David Foster Wallace, framing 9/11 as the sacrifice that America must sometimes make:

“Are you up for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the atrocities of 9/11 not as victims but as democratic martyrs, “sacrifices on the altar of freedom”? In other words, what if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea? And, thus, that ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our democratic way of life—sacrifices not just of our soldiers and money but of our personal safety and comfort?

In still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?”

David Foster Wallace

h/t Hammerito

Here's what the Tea Party has wrought at the local level: CRA-ZEE!

Absolutely, positively bat-shit crazy.

Quote: "Politics is not about service, it's about WINNING!!!!!"

(Note: that's the first time I've ever typed multiple exclamation marks and really thought that I was understating things)



This is what the tea party has wrought. More crazies who think politics is literally - not figuratively, but literally - a contact sport. This is also why Democrats have to have a strong November showing. This nonsense has to be made to look as ridiculous as it is in order that it be discouraged.

Obama's moral cowardice

Jacob Weisberg/Newsweek

Obama has had numerous chances to assert leadership on values questions this summer: Arizona’s crude anti-immigrant law, the battle over Prop 8 and gay marriage, and the backlash against what Fox News persists in calling the “Ground Zero mosque.” These battles raise fundamental questions of national identity, liberty, and individual rights. When Lindsey Graham argues for rewriting the Constitution to eliminate the birthright-citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, or Newt Gingrich proposes a Saudi standard for the free exercise of religion, they’re taking positions at odds with America’s basic ideals. But Obama’s instinctive caution has steered him away from casting these questions as moral or civil-rights issues. On none of them has he shown anything resembling courage.
...

the current politics don’t favor the liberal position. But read the rug: “The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us”—Theodore Roosevelt. Obama has let pass moment after moment—such as the recent Republican suggestion to revise the section of the Constitution that guarantees due process—in which he could have reframed an issue in terms of inclusiveness and justice.

Few would argue that defending liberal principle serves Obama’s short-term interests. Americans oppose the mosque 61 percent to 26 percent, according to one recent poll, and support the Arizona law by an even wider margin. But even if some people don’t like Islam, or illegal immigrants, or gay weddings, they may respond to admonitions that our society is built around freedom of conscience and equal treatment under law. If he applied his oratorical gifts to these principles, Obama could remind a grumbling nation what it liked about him in the first place.

Sadly true. This doesn't mean "give up on this President", however. It means that we need to stand and show the moral courage that we want him to exhibit. It's my belief that he's fallen short in these areas because we've fallen short in these areas. Liberals and progressives worked so hard to elect Obama, and since that point we've largely expected him to govern - in the face of outright distortions, blatant lies, and the worst examples of the politics of hate - by himself while we bicker over how much progress is enough to get us to go back to work for him.

Ultimately, Obama needs to find his moral compass. And so do we.

Mosque funding leads DIRECTLY to News Corp. Fox News: evil, or stupid? Stewart investigates

Newsweek calls out right-wing for wanting to have it both ways

Jonathan Alter

The blame for this extends from Fox News and the Republican leadership, to the peculiar psychology of resentment in public opinion, to the ham-handed political response of the Obama White House. Whatever the cause, if smash-mouth tactics are validated by huge GOP gains in the midterm elections, then Big Lie politics may be with us for good.

In some ways, it has always been with us, going back to the 18th-century calumny of James Callender against John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton. More recently, the Rev. Jerry Falwell sponsored a film that falsely accused President Clinton of ordering murders and dealing drugs. What's changed about politics as a contact sport is the reach of the lies. With the exception of Father Charles Coughlin, the anti-Semitic "radio priest" of the 1930s, reactionaries haven't generally had big audiences. But now the cranks who once could do little more than write ranting letters to the editor on the red ribbons of their typewriters (loaded with exclamation points and in all caps, of course) can spread their venom virally, with the help of right-wing billionaires underwriting their organizations. And while the cable network they watch, Fox News, might not actively promote the idea that the president is a foreign-born Muslim, it does little to knock it down. Fox often covers Obama's place of birth and religion more as matters of opinion than of fact.

I'm sure the right-wing shitstorm will start early tomorrow morning. And really, who cares? This is the Age of the Politics of the Big Lie. Denying it what they do.

The Bush tax plan v. the Obama tax plan... now with pictures

...worth a thousand words and all that:


via Ezra, h/t Hammerito

So if you favor the Bush tax plan, that's fine. Just be aware that you're borrowing billions from the Chinese to reward the richest among us, with no means to pay for it and very limited payback - pennies on the dollar.

GOP economic efficiency: they can screw it up faster than we can fix it