I’m going with “evil”….

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-23-2010/the-parent-company-trap

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/23/park51/index.html

“It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” – Macbeth

AP ran an article entitled, “Rallies over mosque near ground zero get heated.” Probably what struck me is the line: “The dispute has sparked a national debate on religious freedom and American values and is becoming an issue on the campaign trail ahead of the midterm elections.”

Sounds like that’s a coincidence or something. It’s like the same thing with Climategate. The media is willingly blind to the timing of the fake controversies because it’s in their interest to make it look like a genuine controversy where both sides have to be given equal respect.

Turns out this was all for naught. The Islamic Center was just a fool’s dream. Politico broke the story that: “The Cordoba Initiative hasn’t yet begun fundraising for its $100 million goal. The group’s latest fundraising report with the state attorney general’s office, from 2008, shows exactly $18,255 — not enough even for a down payment on the half of the site the group has yet to purchase.

Politico says that it was unlikely that the Islamic Center was ever going to get cleared even disregarding the controversy simply because he did not engage in the kind of public reach out necessary to get sponsorship for this kind of project in New York and got bad legal advice that only delayed the situation:

The Cordoba Initiative’s entire political outreach, meanwhile, appears to have been a call to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer earlier this year, who suggested they visit Community Board 1 merely to measure support. The step was unnecessary — they can build on the site as of right — and was, in retrospect, a mistake.

The hearing gave the impression nationally that there was some kind of government approval required, when in fact that wasn’t the case. A subsequent New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing was forced by opponents trying to stop it.

The plan received support from a Community Board subcommittee, but the chair of the board, Julie Menin, advised El-Gamal to hold a larger town hall forum, where nuances could be addressed and broader groups heard from.

He never did.

The Politico article says that now that the controversy has turned opinion against them so fervently, the “long shot” to begin with is all but impossible.

Nevertheless, the imam actually thinks the publicity is actually a good thing. Maybe he figures it will help bring donations. If so, it could mean that the only reason this gym/pool/prayer area gets built is because of the huge opposition to it.

[Update: Turns out he was right and Politico was wrong. So I definitely shouldn’t have called it a “fool’s dream.” Guess I’m the fool for thinking a crappy publication like Politico would know what they’re talking about. As Bill Maher pointed out, no one on the right even noticed because if it isn’t on Fox News, it doesn’t exist.]

Fareed Zakaria made a good point about how ridiculous it is to think a Sufi Muslim would have anything to do with al Qaida, especially considering that al Qaida attacked a Sufi shrine in July killing 41 and injuring 175 more:

Why would al Qaeda attack a holy place at a time of prayer? Because it is a Sufi shrine, part of a sect that al Qaeda despises and regards as a deadly foe in the real battle it is fighting, the battle within Islam.

The Sufis are a sector of Islam originating in South Asia. They’re all about mysticism, love, brotherhood and devotion, with very little attention to dogma. They believe in saints, shrines, music, dance, and follow a very liberal interpretation of the Koran.

Sufi poets routinely extol the virtues of wine and song, both forbidden in the purer versions of Islam. Sufism has always believed in tolerance towards other people and religion, and in peace. You can see why al Qaeda views it as its mortal enemy. The more Muslims accept some version of Sufi Islam, the more dangerous for al Qaeda and its extreme jihadist philosophy.

A Forbes article points out that this controversy is only hurting our national security:

The potential damage to our national security is not only to our work abroad, but at home too. Today in America we are facing an increased threat of homegrown terrorism. While Bin Laden couldn’t find a single American-Muslim to be part of the 9/11 plot, today, thanks to mixture of poor (and even harmful) leadership within the American-Muslim community and failed strategies from our government in dealing with the threat, some young Muslims are finding themselves increasingly isolated and marginalized–and are becoming easy prey for radicals.

Newt Gingrich went on “Fox and Friends” and said, “We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor” when in fact there is a Shinto shrine around the corner.

I pointed out in the last post that Laura Ingraham changed her position about the imam after it became an issue. She’s not the only one. Glenn Beck, who has now called the center an “actual danger” and suggested it is an “Allah-tells-me-to-blow-up-America mosque,” sat at the same table with Rauf during a 2006 discussion on ABC’s Good Morning America, as Rauf condemned the extremists who issued death threats against the Pope and political cartoonists, and when Diane Sawyer mentioned that the radicals did not include Rauf, Beck seemed to agree, saying “sure, sure,” adding, “I believe it’s a small portion of Islam that is acting in these ways.” Beck even appeared to gesture to Rauf when he invoked the idea of “good Muslims.”

President Bush’s Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes promoted Rauf as an ambassador of Islamic faith in America under the Bush Administration but now says building the Islamic Center will allow terrorists to “celebrate its presence as a twisted victory over our society’s freedoms.”

Ron Paul, always choosing principle over popularity, said the controversy “is all about hate and Islamaphobia,” stoked by “neo-conservatives” who “never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars.”

Shots were even fired into Al Franken’s home! He and his family were not there at the time.

The New York Times tells how Democrats are upset that the controversy took the discussion away from their own fake controversy about Republicans somehow privatizing Social Security even while Obama has veto power.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has decided to join the “move the mosque” side, showing yet again how cowardly Democrats are in the face of negative polls.

As mentioned in the last post, Howard Dean decided to cash some political points of his own by offering to negotiate a “compromise” in which the Cordoba House is opened just a little further away from Ground Zero:

“My argument is simple. This center may be intended as a bridge or a healing gesture but it will not be perceived that way unless a dialogue with a real attempt to understand each other happens. That means the builders have to be willing to go beyond what is their right and be willing to talk about feelings whether the feelings are “justified” or not. No doubt the Republic will survive if this center is built on its current site or not. But I think this is a missed opportunity to try to have an open discussion about why this is a big deal, because it is a big deal to a lot of Americans who are not just right-wing politicians pushing the hate button again. I think those people need to be heard respectfully, whether they are right or whether they are wrong.”

I especially liked the response by Bryan from youaredumb.net:

Whether the feelings are justified is the whole point. Whether the feelings are right or whether they are wrong is the whole point. Where the feelings came from is the whole point. People are having these feelings BECAUSE the right-wing politicians are pushing the hate button again. If they hadn’t, nobody would have even known about these plans except a few locals at zoning meetings in Manhattan.

The feelings aren’t justified. The feelings aren’t right. They shouldn’t be heard respectfully, because you shouldn’t respect things that are unjustified and wrong. And you’re not just calling for those feelings to be heard – they’re being heard, believe me. They’re being broadcast and amplified and multiplied by the echo chamber until they’re completely inescapable.

No, you’re asking the victims of a ginned-up smear and hate campaign to capitulate to that campaign on the grounds that it worked. Everyone’s really upset now, so in the interests of not making people upset anymore, the upset people should get what they want – otherwise, we’ll be forced to assume that the builders aren’t willing to go far enough with their bridge or healing gesture. That’s completely fucking reprehensible, but it’s also typical.

I think Dean has inadvertently given me clarity on what’s been driving me batshit crazy about the Obama administration. It’s what they’d call “pragmatism”, and it goes a little something like this.

Newt Gingrich walks into the Oval Office. He drops his pants, and takes a huge, steaming shit on the carpet. He wipes his ass on the flag, pulls up his pants, and leaves. The reaction is instantaneous. Obama demands action. This shit must be cleaned up! We will do whatever it takes to remove this pile of feces from the carpet. So they bring in dustpans and steam cleaners and Febreze, and after about four hours, Newt’s dump is all but a memory.

The next day, after a hearty breakfast of bran muffins, coffee, and raw bacon, Newt comes in, and does the exact same thing. And this time, one of Obama’s advisors speaks up. “Sir, maybe we should lock the door, or tell Security to keep the former Speaker out of the building. Or get Gingrich back here to clean up his mess.”

But it doesn’t matter how the shit got on the floor. That’s looking backward. The shit is there now, and the important thing is that it goes away as quickly and as painlessly as possible. And so that happens, and the third day, Gingrich shits right into someone’s mouth, and all Rahm Emanuel is willing to do is suggest that Scope might be minty enough to help.

It’s pragmatic, it’s non-confrontational, and it’s even-handed. But it doesn’t do the one thing it needs to do – keep the shit off the rug in the first place. And until Howard Dean and the majority of the Democrats get this through their heads and start actually defending what’s right and justified against what’s unjustified and wrong, people are going to know exactly what that smell is, and what it means.

And finally, a segment on the Rachel Maddow Show explains where some of these conservative fake controversies originated from.

For example, the first person to start the “Obama is a Muslim” rumor was started by Andy Martin who is a serial litigant who filed hundreds if not thousands of lawsuits, mostly against judges who ruled against him in other lawsuits. He even went so far as to try to intervene in a judge’s divorce.

The Birther rumor was started by a Russian dentist/realtor/lawyer Orly Tatz, was also fined for a frivolous lawsuit.

As for the “Ground Zero Mosque”: This began with Stop the Islamization of America, headed by Pam Geller, a Birther who blogs on the Ayn Rand-themed blog “Atlas Shrugs.” She believes that Obama’s health care plan includes death panels, that there is a secret shadow government, that Obama is organizing a private youth army recruiting from high schools, and that Obama has everyone wear purple during some kind of political attack, making it Obama’s official “gansta color.”

Maddow’s stand-in points out that this same controversy was “conceived in the same crank workshop that churned out ‘Obama gang-colors’…”, and “…out of this workshop of insanity comes a position now being adopted by the Democratic Senate Majority Leader. Let’s just hope the Senate doesn’t decide to consider a bill banning the color purple.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5XlwrSUnCU[/youtube]

So more news on the Cordoba Islamic Center in New York:

Turns out that the Cordoba imam Feisal Abdul Rauf worked with both the FBI and the Bush White House in an outreach program. The program, of which Rauf was only one of some 50 projects, sought to “bring a moderate perspective” to foreign audiences about Muslims living in the United States. The effects were so positive the Bush State Dept. requested the program be expanded in 2003. The imam even wrote a book called “What is Right With Islam is What is Right With America.” You’d think since the conservative media is always claiming they’re “looking” for moderate Muslims but can never find any, that he might have been good example to feature for their audience.

Instead, the Conservative media is lying about his beliefs, calling him a radical, and are characterizing another trip scheduled for the imam as an idea cooked up by Obama so that the imam can raise funds to build the “Ground Zero Mosque.” Never mind the fact that program strictly forbade raising any money for alternative means. One might ask Bill Kristol if he thinks Rauf is such a radical, why didn’t he bring up this problem when the imam was working for Bush? If it’s the proximety to Ground Zero, why not bring up the fact that Muslim services are given every week at the nondenominational chapel right on Ground Zero? To ask it is to answer it. This “issue,” which some Conservatives have been trying to press since April, would never have existed under the Bush presidency. But now that it does exist the right-wing noise machine is going to stoke the flames as much as possible. Here’s the latest reactions to the fake controversy:

Christian Conseravtive Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, an invited speaker at the Values Voter Summit next month along with Michele Bachmann, Mitch McConnell, Newt Gingrich and Bobby Jindal, says that “Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America” because “each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.” No doubt if he had lived in Rome he would have called for all Christian churches to be banned because of what some Jews did protesting Roman interference in Israel.

Obama at first defended the Islamic Center but then walked back the statements by saying he wasn’t commenting on the “wisdom” of it. Jon Stewart did a pretty good job lambasting him for that as well as calling out Beck for his hypocritical attacks on the imam behind it. As Michael Gerson points out, “Obama managed to collect all the political damage for taking an unpopular stand without gaining credit for political courage.”

Compare this to Joe Scarborough, who has valiantly taken on his own party for this, saying he “prays to God” that another Republican “will have the courage to call Newt Gingrich out.” If only Obama had half the courage as Scarborough.

Fareed Zakaria returned the award given to him by the ADL for their wishy-washy response to the Cordoba Center. I think he should be commended for that.

Josh Barro points out that it makes little sense that Conservatives want the Burlington Coat Factor “preserved” while the government throws a ton of money at financing the redevelopment of the rest of it.

Howard Dean says that since the imam wants to help heal the nation, Dean wants to find a compromise in moving the Cardoba House. Bryan brilliantly tears it into pieces.

Former Bush advisor Mark McKinnon said: “Usually Republicans are forthright in defending the Constitution. And here we are, reinforcing al Qaeda’s message that we’re at war with Muslims. ”

Some people were actually surprised Pat Buchanan reprimanded Newt as a “political opportunist” and that anti-Muslim fervor has gone “too far” but I knew someone who tried to defend not entering World War II is not the kind of person who would sell out.

Andrew Sullivan called out Palin but that’s hardly news.

The Libertarian think tank CATO published a post linking several articles criticizing the GOP, but the article is gone today for some reason. However, Gene Healy dismisses the issue as a red herring, saying: “It’s a bogus issue seized by the GOP establishment to distract the rank-and-file from the party’s reluctance to shrink government.”

The conservative NewsBusters took the news that there are other mosques near Ground Zero to mean building an “additional mosque” (that is, a cultural center) is a “needless exercise in dividing New Yorkers.”

Erick Erickson, a Redstate journalist and CNN contributor, tweeted: “Paging the Church of Satan: Our founding principles demand Barack Obama support your rights to human sacrifice. Carry on.”

The right-wing group Stop Islamization of America has announced that it will be hosting a rally against the proposed Cordoba House Islamic community center on September 11, with confirmed speakers John Bolton, Andrew Breitbart, and, the far-right Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders. Newt Gingrich has reportedly bowed out.

Laura Ingraham, who recently got in trouble for discussing the word “nigger” on her radio show, decided that the building of the Islamic Center would mean “the terrorists win”:

There’s a disconnect, George, between the elites and the way they think about this, and, I think most New Yorkers, and most of the country. I know Michael Bloomberg was out there saying, “Well, our values need to be properly represented to the world, and if this mosque isn’t going to be built, what is that going to say? The terrorists win!” Well, I say the terrorists have won with how this has gone down. 600 feet from where thousands of our fellow Americans were incinerated in the name of political Islam, and we’re supposed to be cheering this?!

Yet she was actually had the imam’s wife on her show back in December. Not only did she not say anything against it, she actually backed the construction of the center!!! Here’s the quote:

I can’t find many people who really have a problem with it. [Mayor] Bloomberg is for it. Rabbis are saying they don’t have a problem with it. […] I like what you’re trying to do and Ms. Khan we appreciate it and come on my radio show some time.

Seems like the “disconnect” is really between the Laura Ingraham that wants to pretend she’s tolerant of other faiths and the Laura Ingraham that wants to jump on the Conservative bandwagon and bully innocent Muslims.

The controversy is getting so big, some Muslims outside the U.S. are beginning to take note of it.

A Time poll says that 61% of those polled oppossed the construction while 70% believes that building a mosque is an insult to the victims of 9/11.

This pretty much proves that people are stupid.

Maybe stupid is the wrong word. Bobby Fischer denied the Holocaust. So maybe crazy, but probably both.

Think I’m being insensitive? Well it also says 32% of Americans think Muslims should be barred from being president.

But, hey, that’s only 8% more than the percentage of people who think the current president is a Muslim. Those are just the crackpots.

Then explain why only 58% of people believe he was born in the United States while another 23% are unsure. Why did Hawaii have to enact a state law just so they could start ignoring the repeated demands for Obama’s birth certificate?

Tell me why 55% of likely voters think Obama is a Socialist, while only 39% think he is not.

Explain how almost half of Americans think Obama initiated TARP and the bailouts, with only a third knowing that it was Bush.

Well, you could say that that is all a product of a propaganda crusade. Roosevelt was also called a Communist. People will sometimes say things they don’t really believe to show support for the policies they support.

Okay, then explain why one in three Birthers actually supports Obama.

Tell me how tax bills for 2009 were the lowest in 60 years while only 12% of Americans know this and twice as many believe taxes have gone up.

Maybe people just pay more attention to politics than their checkbook.

All right. Then explain this one: 26% of Americans do not know what country we declared our independence from.

Yeah, we are THAT fucking stupid.

We have 18% of our older, whiter, richer, and more educated Americans trying to re-enact the Revolution and apparently some of them don’t even know what the original revolt was about.

But, admittedly, the majority of the truly stupid things are political. The polls get even worse when you look at Republicans alone. When we poll them we find that almost half are sure Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. (45%), that more than half believe Obama is a socialist (67%), that he wants to take away Americans’ guns (61%), is a Muslim (57%), has done “many” things that are not constitutional (55%), wants to turn the country over to a one world government (51%), that he’s a “domestic enemy” (45%), that he’s itching to “use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers” (41%), yet at the same time “wants the terrorists to win” (22%), that he is “doing many of the things that Hitler did” (38%), and that he may be the Anti-Christ (24%).

Yeah, one in four Republicans are half-expecting Obama to call upon Satan to enslave the world and possibly re-enact some kind of Left Behind-style death and resurrection thing to fool the world into thinking he’s the Second Christ.

Even the conservative periodical Human Events did a piece pointing out that for a Socialist, Obama sure doesn’t have a lot of Socialist support. They even manage to print some rational quotes from the Socialist Party such as: “A socialist program (even a reformist one) would not be a program that props up capitalism when it fails, but one that transforms the economy. None of Senator Obama’s proposals do that. Senator Obama’s tax plan is regressive and even less ‘progressive’ than programs put forward under such conservative administrations like the one of Richard Nixon.” F.N. Brill, National Secretary of the World Socialist Party is quoted as saying, “Obama is as much a socialist as the Pope is an atheist.”

I think a big part of the problem is Liberals don’t like lying. Conservatives don’t care. It’s just about winning. They’ll throw anything and just hope it sticks. We’ve had a streak of fake conservative outrages now; where’s the fake liberal outrages? Democrats would probably do a lot better if they made up stuff like “birth certificate,” “death panels,” and “Ground Zero mosque” because buzz words like that get thrown around so much, people who aren’t interested in politics just start believing them because they hear them. Conservatives either say Obama is from Kenya or they simply say that it no longer resonates or that it was a “primary argument.” There’s not even a consideration about how there’s no facts behind it; it doesn’t matter. Truth is irrelevant. What’s relevant is if it sticks with the public.

A series of scientific studies have also shown how anxiety from the economic crisis is probably feeding this rash of xenophobia. NewScientist explains:

Across all studies, anxious conditions caused participants to become more eagerly engaged in their ideals and extreme in their religious convictions. In one study, mulling over a personal dilemma caused a general surge toward more idealistic personal goals. In another, struggling with a confusing mathematical passage caused a spike in radical religious extremes. In yet another, reflecting on relationship uncertainties caused the same religious zeal reaction.

Paul Krugman makes a similar explanation saying:

When the economy plunged into crisis, many observers – myself included – expected a political shift to the left. After all, the crisis made nonsense of the right’s markets-know-best, regulation-is-always-bad dogma. In retrospect, however, this was naive: Voters tend to react with their guts, not in response to analytical arguments – and in bad times, the gut reaction of many voters is to move right.

That’s the message of a recent paper by the economists Markus Bruckner and Hans Peter Gruner, who find a striking correlation between economic performance and political extremism in advanced nations: In both America and Europe, periods of low economic growth tend to be associated with a rising vote for right-wing and nationalist political parties. The rise of the tea party, in other words, was exactly what we should have expected in the wake of the economic crisis.

So I guess as long as this economic crisis, which was caused by rich bankers wanting to be even richer, we’re going to continue to see social issues get crazier and crazier, until even Democrats have to pretend to be tolerant of intolerance while enacting policies that increasingly makes rich people even richer because poor people are stressed out and easily manipulated into voting against their interests by social issues that don’t affect them.