posted August 17, 2010 10:59 PM            

The issue is whether this Imam should respect the wishes of 9/11 families and others in the community and build it somewhere else.

posted August 18, 2010 08:02 AM            

You could have easily found this out for yourself...

"9/11 Families Reject Towering Mosque Planned for Ground Zero Site

posted August 18, 2010 09:24 AM            

We are not having a sensitivity class here, this is religious freedom. And last I checked we still have that in this country.

posted August 18, 2010 11:38 AM              

'If Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.''' —FOX News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, after San Francisco voted to ban military recruiters from city schools, Nov. 8, 2005

o'reilly also repeatedly revved up the slant on the abortion doctor who didn't deserve to live according to many religious righters.

posted August 18, 2010 12:04 PM            

In that instance, it involved Hitler's Socialism. That member objected to calling Hitler a Socialist...though he clearly was...and said he was.

That member rejected the notion because he didn't have the information directly from Hitler.

So Node, if your standard for posting involves personal contact with those whom are being reported about before conclusions about their positions can be posted...then Node, I reject your proposition.

Speeches by 9/11 families, articles by 9/11 families, petitions by 9/11 families serve the purpose well to establish the facts that 9/11 families want Cordova House, the proposed mosque built somewhere other than 2 blocks for the 9/11 attack site.

It's not a question of religious liberty. It's a question of propriety.

Well katatonic. I find myself in agreement with O'Reilly.

Why shouldn't those who assist terrorists and who reject those who are fighting against terrorists...why indeed should they not be right at ground zero in the next terrorist attack on the United States? And if they are, why should the rest of us help them?

posted August 18, 2010 07:09 PM            

quote:

---

That member rejected the notion because he didn't have the information directly from Hitler.

---

posted August 18, 2010 11:39 PM            

You rejected Hitler's Socialism even when he averred he was a Socialist.

You rejected Hitler's Socialism even when high ranking members of the Nazi government were forever honking on about the wonders of their National Socialist government.

You rejected Hitler's Socialism even though the name of Hitler's political party was the.....................

National Socialist German Workers' Party.

I suspect that even if I had resurrected Hitler and Hitler whispered in your little ear..."hey acoustic, I am a Socialist"...you would question your ears.

Yes, Hitler fought against communists in Germany but you never managed to connect the dots.

Those communists...Marxists...were Stalin's communists, not his and they were trying to overthrow Hitler on Stalin's orders. There wasn't room for 2 Socialist genocidal thug dictators to rule Europe.

posted August 22, 2010 05:02 PM              

which is about a community center, not a mosque at all (let alone a towering one!)

which is 2+ blocks away from ground zero (although apparently a halal meat sandwich truck is parked on the corner in full view of ground zero and well-patronized by the locals)

and which has many so-called americans trying to find a way to make it legal to discriminate against people because of their race, religion AND creed! including our mz pee who says she wants to revive the constitution but apparently doesn't know the first amendment OR anything about said "mosque".

so when Sour Puss calls this a CHRISTIAN nation i can't agree , jwhop that that means we have christian values that tolerate all religions. it means quite obviously that "true" americans are christians, despite the facts that completely contradict such a belief.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/3-reasons-the-ground-zero-mosque-debate-makes-no-sense/

posted August 22, 2010 06:30 PM              

The Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., is planning to burn as many copies of the Holy Quran as it can find on September 11th. The city of Gainesville has denied the group a fire permit, but the Dove World Outreach Center says it will go ahead with burning copies of the holy book of Islam anyway.

posted August 23, 2010 12:02 PM            

O'Bomber, as usual, stepped in it and finds himself on the wrong end of American sentiment on the issue.

O'Bomber went out of his way...when he didn't need to say a word about a decision which should be made by local New York residents...but he decided to enlighten Americans anyway.

He set up a strawman argument...constitutional right, when no one is or has argued the radical Islamic Imam doesn't have the right.

This is just one of a continuing string of O'Bomber goofs to which he seems addicted. Members of his own party are running away from O'Bomber on this issue or deciding to "remain silent"...as is their right.

Still, I like it very much. It causes O'Bomber Kool-Aid drinkers to rip off their masks and rush to his defense.

Our Lecturer in Chief
By Andrew Cline on 8.20.10 @ 6:10AM

President Obama just can't help himself. It's impulse. Every time he sees the American people, in their infinite and confounding ignorance, pursuing a course they shouldn't, he intervenes to correct them. Such is the view from the clouds on which he placidly floats above us all.

Most politicians speak of the wisdom of the American people. Some even believe it. But not Obama. Time and time again, he takes to the lectern to scold or educate us. (** Let me be clear..this is hecting**)

Last Friday, he needlessly jumped into a percolating political controversy -- again -- to enlighten the uneducated masses. This time the subject was the Islamic cultural center proposed to be built two blocks from Ground Zero, where Islamist terrorists murdered more than 2,700 Americans.

"The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country," he said, beginning what was to be yet another lecture on what he sees as our failure as a people to live up to our values. "And the pain and the experience of suffering by those who lost loved ones is just unimaginable. So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. And ground zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.

"But let me be clear. As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And 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 unshakable."

No one can pack more conceit, more condescension, into two little paragraphs than Barack Obama can. In the first paragraph, he establishes that opponents of the Islamic center are reacting purely emotionally. "I understand the emotions that this issue engenders." In the second, he informs us that, as an enlightened being, he sees this issue properly -- it's about freedom of religion. Appealing to our reverence for the Constitution, he states that "our commitment" (all Americans are bound by creed to agree on this) "must be unshakable."

These are not the words of a president attempting to lead and unite a nation. They are the words of an academic attempting to instruct a class that he considers particularly thick-headed. And they came unprompted. He didn't have to address the issue at all. He wanted to. He needed to. His conscience compelled him to.

This is how President Obama so often gets himself into trouble. He didn't have to weigh in on the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest. But he couldn't help himself. He had to use it as a "teachable moment" on race relations.

He didn't have to explain to Joe the Plumber that he intended to "spread the wealth around." He didn't have to tell Democratic donors in San Francisco that rural Pennsylvanians salve their bitterness by clinging to guns and religion. But he just couldn't help himself.

Last year, in his third press conference as president, he couldn't resist telling Americans to wash their hands and cover their mouths when they cough.

Obama has never transitioned from his former job as a college lecturer. The reason is that he really doesn't see his new job as that different. It just has more perks, such as the ability to use force when persuasion fails. And the ability to have paid staffers step forward to clarify one's ill-considered remarks.

The day after asserting that no American should object to an Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero -- "in lower Manhattan," as he put it -- he contradicted himself, saying, "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. That's what our country is about."

If he wasn't giving his approval of a mosque near Ground Zero, then why did he specifically define the location ("lower Manhattan") where he said we must all be unshakably committed to the right of Muslims to build a mosque?

When the press found his clarification not all that clarifying, the president's staff rephrased it. White House Spokesman Bill Burton said on Saturday, "What he said last night, and reaffirmed today, is that if a church, a synagogue or a Hindu temple can be built on a site, you simply cannot deny that right to those who want to build a mosque."

That's a better way to put it. But it still fails to clarify. Here is why. The question never was one of religious freedom -- because the use of government force is not at issue. The question is whether the backers of this Islamic center should build it two blocks from Ground Zero, not whether government should stop them.

In his haste to teach us all a lesson, Obama misread the issue. This is nothing new. As is his habit, he was so eager to talk that he never listened to the conversation into which he injected himself. As with his instant analysis of the Gates affair, he hastily leapt in with a pre-set conclusion. In both instances his conclusion was the same -- I must speak out to show the majority how it is being intolerant of the minority.

Here is a president who presumes that most Americans are intolerant, uneducated simpletons who need to be taught constitutional basics by their president. And in his mind, they have exactly the right president for the job.

posted August 23, 2010 12:14 PM              

that doesn't mean "except when some people might be offended" - if a black man moves in next door to you, even a black muslim, you have no right to question his taste in doing so. sorry.

the writer of the first article i posted is a new yorker who uses the staten island ferry daily. ground zero used to be part of the skyline there. the muslim community center is not a prominent feature of the landscape. it is BLOCKS AWAY.

why is no one protesting the halal truck that is right AT ground zero? perhaps because they enjoy the sandwiches? the MUSLIM sandwiches! arrest the traitors! or at least cover the word HALAL on the side of the cart.

posted August 23, 2010 03:56 PM            

But this is not now and never was a 1st Amendment issue. This was always about this radical Islamic Imam trying to stick his finger in the eye of Americans...and especially those Americans who had family and/or friends killed when Islamic terrorists attacked the World Trade Center.

Now, it's about O'Bomber attempting to suck up to the 30% or so Kool-Aid drinkers who approve the building of this Mosque 2 blocks from Ground Zero. 70% of Americans oppose it and more would too if they knew who this Radical Islamic Imam really is.

posted August 23, 2010 06:32 PM            

This is not a Constitutional...1st Amendment issue because the US Government is not attempting to prevent this radical Islamic Imam from building the mosque near "Ground Zero".

posted August 27, 2010 08:56 AM            

But hope springs eternal in the little black hearts of leftists. They keep attacking Palin and she leaves them cut and bleeding in the dust.

This time, it was a union boss thug. Palin first cut him up then appealed to his union members to join her and other conservatives in straightening out the messes leftists have made in America.

I keep thinking that one day leftists are going to get it and leave Palin alone.

This ain't no pussycat. They don't call Palin..."Sarah Barracuda" for nothing.

Union Brothers and Sisters, Join Our Commonsense Cause!
by Sarah Palin on Thursday, August 26, 2010 at 3:57pm.

Two years ago almost to the day, I was thrilled to meet with union members at the Alaska AFL-CIO Convention in Anchorage to sign important job-creation legislation related to the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act. As a former card-carrying IBEW sister married to a proud former IBEW and later USW member, it was a great moment for all of us. Our Alaska union brothers and sisters helped build our state! Many of them risked their lives to complete our infrastructure, including the Trans-Alaska Pipeline that stretches over treacherous mountain ranges from the North Slope oil fields to Valdez. By signing that job-creation bill surrounded by union members, I was paying tribute to them and acknowledging that they would be valued partners in the construction of Alaska’s long awaited natural gas pipeline. I was honored that day to receive a standing ovation from them for signing a bill that provided a Project Labor Agreement to bring good jobs to these good men and women.

Today, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka came to Alaska (on a trip paid for with union dues) to preach the usual Beltway nonsense. There was a bit of the politics of personal destruction thrown around, and he mixed it in with the same old big government agenda that has been rejected in union halls, town halls, and voting booths all over our country.

I’m not sure why he’s attacking my record when I’m not the one responsible for the policies resulting in continued mass unemployment and a weak economy (that would be the man in the large white house on Pennsylvania Avenue). Among my “crimes,” the union boss cited the fact that I sometimes write notes on my hand (guilty as charged!); that I appear on cable television every once in a while to comment on the news (it’s called the First Amendment, Rich); and that my commonsense conservatism makes him laugh. Well, I guess that’s better than the failed leftwing big government policies of “his friend” Barack Obama, which makes the rest of us cry.

Trumka’s even worried I’m going to get violent against him. It’s kind of ironic that a union boss has the gall to accuse anyone of threatening violence. After all, we remember the violent attempts by SEIU to intimidate those who wanted to make their voices heard in last year’s town halls. And unlike Trumka, I never threatened that any effort to break a picket line would lead to violence. Come to think of it, neither did I ever hide behind the Fifth Amendment during a federal investigation about union corruption. Then again, I was just an ordinary, card-carrying union member, not one of the big shots who ended up, unfortunately, giving unions a bad name.

Trumka’s attempts to put himself on the side of the working man and woman would be more convincing if he weren’t a career union boss who’s spent most of his life in DC. No surprise then that his priorities aren’t the priorities of the average working man or woman, but of the Beltway power player. My fellow union brothers and sisters have had their union dues squandered for far too long by a few of the union bosses who work for partisan politics and not the good blue collar Americans who have to fund their cushy salaries.

Trumka purposely misquoted something I said in a speech I gave in Texas a few months ago. Let me clarify things for him: I never called union members “thugs.” You lie. I called some union leaders “thugs.” And I refuse to apologize for that because they have acted like thugs –at least in this day and age.

In the past there were many great union leaders who courageously defended the rights of workers. Unions were founded for all the right reasons! They were to give working men and women the clout to negotiate fairly with their employers and to fight for decent pay and working conditions. The unions of old would often end up fighting big government on behalf of the little guy. Today’s unions seem to be big government’s most enthusiastic supporters. It’s turned into some nonsense when union bosses back the government takeover of the car industry, and the mortgage industry, and the entire health care sector. And with the help of big government they aim to push through card check legislation that some characterize as being unfair to workers, and even un-American, because of its insistence on stripping workers of their right to privacy with a secret ballot. And that’s not just me voicing concern over card check – ask current union members how comfortable they are with what some of their leaders are saying about the legislation.

To my hardworking, patriotic brothers and sisters in the labor movement: you don’t have to put up with the scare tactics and the big government agenda of the union bosses. There is a different home for you: the commonsense conservative movement. It cares about the same things you and I care about: a government that doesn’t spend beyond its means, an economy focused on creating good jobs with good wages, and a leadership that is proud of America’s achievements and doesn’t go around apologizing to everyone for who we are.

This November, you have a choice. You can go with the flow and merely pull the lever the way they tell you to. Or you can join millions of others, and take a stand for freedom and independence and dignity, while still being part of a greater working community.

Join us. I promise you, you won’t regret it, and Americans who want good jobs for our families will be better off for it!

- Sarah Palin

posted August 27, 2010 10:06 AM            

Especially these lines:

quote:

---

the commonsense conservative movement.

---

So much common sense was floated around within the "conservative movement" for two terms
That: we borrowed money to fund two wars. Took a surplus in and left with trillions of debt.
Stripped social services but grew the government.
Spied on American citizens.
Made government contracts an extremely lucrative business never mind how systemically corrupt, hey whats the new design for the mercenary logo?
Common-sense- icaly deregulate pretty much all utilities and big oil, lets not forget about housing, insurance and banks....ok lets just say deregulate everything...yeah that makes the most sense.

quote:

---

It cares about the same things you and I care about: a government that doesn’t spend beyond its means,

---

This might be the most ludicrous line in here but it has stiff competition.

Bush did nothing but spend, and paid for nothing.
The tax cuts that have a 10 year expiration now?
The Conservatives had control of congress and the WH when those ~tax cuts for the rich~ were jammed through with the -gasp- horrifying reconciliation process. The 'real' conservatives themselves put the expiration in.

an economy focused on creating good jobs with good wages,

Then why were we loosing jobs before 2007? And why did wages remain stagnant?

quote:

---

and a leadership that is proud of America’s achievements

---

" and doesn’t go around apologizing to everyone for who we are.??"

Sarah the Grifter stumbles again.

Never has the conservative "movement" been more lost.
I want to know where the conservatives we can respect are hiding. They are out there, .. must be a few in congress I am sure, I just can't think of one offhand.

posted August 27, 2010 10:49 AM            

Dump toxic chemicals in rivers, lakes, ponds and streams...go to jail. No fines, no wrist slaps...go to jail.

Low individual and business taxes, smaller more efficient government which doesn't meddle in the lives of businesses and citizens creates the jobs and wealth for which America is known around the world.

That's "common sense Conservative" government.

"Then why were we loosing jobs before 2007? And why did wages remain stagnant?"..Node

You are either grossly uninformed or misinformed.

The unemployment rate for year 2007 was 4.6% and for 2008, 5.8%.

O'Bomber's first year of afflicting the economy...2009, it was 9.3%...and hasn't been lower since.

Surely, you remember O'Bomber bowing and scraping and apologizing for America...and Americans around the world...don't you Node?

posted August 27, 2010 11:15 AM            

quote:

---

Unemployment:
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose from 4.2% in January 2001, peaking at 6.3% in June 2003 and reaching a trough of 4.4% in March 2007. After an economic slowdown, the rate rose again to 6.1% in August 2008 and up to 7.2% in December 2008.[55] From December 2007 when the recession started to December 2008, an additional 3.6 million people became unemployed.[56] And, in January 2009, his last month in office, the nation lost 655,000 jobs, raising the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent, the highest level in more than 15 years.[57]

---

There was a new definition for Fiscal responsibility made for conservatives? I guess so.

And we all know what deregulation has going for it.

We know what deregulation of

• energy
• Banks
• Oil Industry does for us.

And we all know where conservatives have placed Americans, the Constitution, Social Services and funding for infrastructure, not to mention [again] Fiscal Responsibility on the list.

Oh and by the by while I am quoting facts how about the number of times conservatives have tried to privatize Social Security?

Here is a number for you, 42

posted August 28, 2010 04:15 PM            

Big money: Sarah Palin has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to candidates she has endorsed in the past few months

Take any year and if it divides evenly by four, what you have is an American presidential election year.
Add or subtract two years, and what you have is a mid-term election year such as 2010, something not quite as delicious as a presidential year, granted. But I love this year just the same. That’s because I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Smells like victory.

And who is shaping up as the leader of the victory this time, who has been throwing the napalm? This is where the year does indeed start to get delicious. Sarah Palin has turned into the king-maker of the mid-term elections.

The party primaries have started, and the power that Mrs Palin now has with the anti-government Tea Party movement has started knocking establishment Republicans right off the party ticket.

Establishment Republicans: those are the kind of Republican politicians who think their job is to be ‘bi-partisan.’ On Capitol Hill this is called ‘being willing to reach across the aisle.’ Problem is, among the new conservative Tea Party surge this is called ‘being willing to betray conservative principles.’

And in the midst of what is being called the Great Recession, as unemployment stays high, house prices get ready to plunge again, and the deficit moves into unimaginable trillions, this Tea Party surge is angry.

Some of the Tea Party people might have believed Barack Obama would deliver change for the good in America. They don’t believe it anymore.

As Sarah Palin mocked in her speech to the Tea Party Convention in February, ‘How’s that hopey, changey stuff working out for ya?’ Short answer: it’s not.

So here is an example of what is happening. There could be no Republican politician more establishment than John McCain, the rich Arizona senator who ran as Republican presidential candidate in 2008 against Barack Obama.

Mrs Palin was his vice-presidential running mate. She joined the ticket as an unknown Alaskan governor and turned into a star overnight: a populist conservative, Christian, straight-shooter in every sense.

Anyone familiar with John McCain’s career in the Senate - his best political buddy for years was the unspeakably left-wing Ted Kennedy - knew he couldn’t possibly want Governor Palin on his ticket. But the party knew he had to try to get the conservatives onboard.

So they ran together, and while Mrs Palin fought for her party, her running mate undermined her. The Democrats mocked her. Their intellectual friends in the mainstream media wrote her off. And they all drove over her broken body together on the way to the inauguration - no, the coronation - of President Obama.

Well, Christians don’t believe in the resurrection of the dead for nothing. In the months following the defeat, Mrs Palin started travelling the country, speaking at conservative rallies in dozens of states. They loved her. She showed that she and her support among conservative Americans were back from the dead.

Which is why, two years after Senator McCain treated Mrs Palin with such distain, things are so splendidly different now.

Crowd pleaser: The former Governor of Alaska speaks to supporters during the Tea Party Express tour in Boston earlier this year

The surge in the anti-establishment Tea Party movement – or call it the conservative grassroots movement, call it whatever you like – is being felt especially in states such as Arizona, which is plagued by one of the great national problems conservatives want to fight: illegal immigration.

Arizona shares a border with Mexico. That means its number one problem at the moment is illegals, thousands upon thousands of them, taking jobs from Americans and from those aliens who are in the country legally, and undermining pay rates and bloating welfare costs.

The Obama government will give Arizona no help in enforcing the Federal laws against such illegal immigration (Latinos vote Democrat). The people of Arizona want a serious fence built all along the Mexican border. And until recently, the people of Arizona have been getting no support in this fight from their own US Senator, John McCain.

Which is why the Arizona primary election for the Republican nomination for Senator this year looked like a perfect opportunity for the Tea Party and its spiritual leader Mrs Palin. They had a chance to back a strong conservative candidate to take on and oust the establishment candidate, John McCain.

And why not? Mrs Palin owed the Senator no favours.

But here’s the thing. Mrs Palin, showing how she has learned in these last two years just how political leverage works, came out in support of John McCain. Or rather, in support of what advertising men might call ‘the new improved John McCain,’ with all that Kennedy-style pro-illegal-immigration stuff washed right out of him.

He even called on the federal government to ‘finish the danged fence.’
Result? On Tuesday, despite distrust among Arizona conservatives, Senator McCain beat a former US Congressman who billed himself as ‘consistently conservative.’ In great part thanks to the power of Palin.

The power has been seen in the other primaries, too, most spectacularly in Mrs Palin’s home state of Alaska.

There the establishment-Republican pro-abortion Senator Lisa Murkowski may lose her place on the Republican ticket in November because of a challenge by a Tea Party-Palin backed outsider, Joe Miller.

Miller is a Chuck Norris war-hero look-alike (and apparently think-alike). With Palin’s backing, he destroyed a 30 per cent lead in the opinion polls Senator Murkowski held going into this election.

As I write this, Miller looks like the winner but the count is too close to call, and it could take more than a week to get the final result because of absentee ballots not yet counted. But whatever happens, what has happened so far is already a shocker for the Republican ‘bi-partisan’ establishment.

Politico website points out that if Senator Murkowski loses, ‘she would become the third senator this year to be ousted by a primary challenger.’

The mood across America is against the insiders of any party, particular within the Republican Party. As the left-wing writer EJ Dionne put it on Thursday: ‘Republicans are in the midst of an insurrection.’

How insider is Senator Murkowski? She wasn’t elected to her first term in the Senate, she was appointed in 2002 by the Governor of Alaska when the seat became vacant. The name of the governor at that time was Murkowski. He was her father. Why was the seat vacant? Because Daddy Murkowski had vacated it when he was elected governor.

Four other Palin-endorsed candidates won on Tuesday. But Palin has already been claiming victory for the Tea Party for months. She says it was the grassroots conservatives who put a truck-driving Republican into Teddy Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat earlier this year.

In May, Rand Paul, son of the much-loved libertarian conservative leader Congressman from Texas, Ron Paul, won the Kentucky Republican primary to face a Democrat opponent in the race for a US Senate seat in November.

Dr Paul had Sarah Palin’s endorsement. And he knew just what it was worth in his primary: ‘Sarah Palin is a giant in American politics.’

Of course, all this is just a warm up for what the Tea Party people will do to the Democrat candidates in the November elections for the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate.

As Ronald Reagan said in 1984: ‘It’s morning again in America.’ And I can just smell the napalm.

posted August 28, 2010 06:11 PM              

using "honoring the troops" as an excuse for a political rally for sarah and a religious one for glenn beck who seems to have forgotten that he rightly described himself as an "entertainer" a few weeks ago? they have no respect for americans! they might as well call us all morons.

yes by all means build the damn fence; let's have our own version of the iron curtain and the berlin corridor, that will make us FREE!! with towers and machine guns too, yippee ki yay!

not.

"it's morning in america..." he should have said, i'll be gone before the **** i've planted hits the fan for real...