Supporters of the mosque’s construction like to create several intellectual dodges in order to bolster their opinions.  I’ve already addressed the first one: that it’s legal because it’s in the Constitution and in [...]]]> There’s a little more that needs to be said about the Ground Zero Mosque.  I’ve described the nuts and bolts of it here.

Supporters of the mosque’s construction like to create several intellectual dodges in order to bolster their opinions.  I’ve already addressed the first one: that it’s legal because it’s in the Constitution and in America we don’t trample on other people’s rights to worship.  Seeing that nobody worth listening to is opposing the mosque on legal grounds, it’s silly to even bring it up.  No one is saying that Muslims don’t have a right to worship.  Or that they don’t have the right to worship in New York.  Or that they don’t have the right to build mosques in New York.  The argument against the mosque’s construction involves issues of basic human decency and sensitivity to those who have lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks, not issues of religious freedom.  We’re not saying you can’t worship Allah.  We’re saying that you shouldn’t build a mosque right next to the site where other Muslims murdered thousands of people.  That’s not a complex issue.  Addressing the non-issue of religious freedom in America is an easy way to keep from addressing the main point: Islam’s fundamental disagreement with western values, characterized by the Ground Zero Mosque (among many other things).

The other intelligence-insulting dodge GZ Mosque supporters throw out is that there’s no difference between building a mosque on that site and building a church or synagogue.  This would be a valid point if Christians and Jews flew planes into the Twin Towers while shouting praises to Jesus and Yahweh.  They didn’t.  Militant Islamists made this a holy war against the west.  They attacked us in the name of their religion.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this eliding of the religious issue is a worthwhile argument.  Just because you don’t see a difference between Christians and Jews and Islamists, it doesn’t mean that the rest of us lack perspicacity.  Islamists have been trying to export their religious beliefs through violence for quite some time now.  Don’t you read the news?

Those of us (close to 70% of Americans by the most recent polls) who are against the GZ Mosque’s construction have been labeled as bigots, racists, and whatever other names the left likes to call people who disagree with them.  This is an important point: the vast majority of people who support the mosque are liberals.  We’ve seen many times how the left in this country likes to publicly burnish its moral superiority, and in this issue, it’s made no exception.  As usual, if you disagree, you’re not only wrong, but evil (and stupid).  This isn’t surprising, but it also shows how out of touch the left wing is with basic American values and belief systems.  Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, said that opponents of the mosque should be investigated.  Think about that: this isn’t just some Congressidiot from east Texas no one ever heard of.  This is a Congressional leader saying that people who disagree with her should be subject to investigation.  So you’re not only stupid and evil, but you should just shut up too, if you know what’s good for you.  Our intellectual betters are pretty comfortable telling us that we’re bigots, all 70% of us.

It’s been brought up that the intention of the mosque- er, community center is to “build bridges” from Islam to the west, so we should support it.  Sticking your thumb into the eye of 70% of the country is a damned silly way to build a bridge.  Not only that, but there’s no guarantee that whatever goes on in that mosque will be dedicated to “healing the rift.”  We’ve seen that a great deal of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” talk goes on in mosques.  I’m not going to tell Muslims how to practice their religion; after all, the First Amendment protects freedom of religion.  I know this because liberals have suddenly made freedom of worship a big deal in this country.  They’ve been staunch supporters of it for at least the past week.  In any event, there’s no way to tell what’s going to happen there, and just because a very questionable project’s spokesman makes noises about good intentions, there’s no guarantee of follow-through.  “Islam is a religion of peace,” many say.  Including President Bush.  Me, I don’t know the majority of Muslims, so I’m not as comfortable speaking for all of them.  All I can do is look at behavior patterns.  Jews tend to vote Democrat.  Christians tend to celebrate Christmas.  Muslims tend to let the most violent sects of their faith do the loudest talking.

The fact is that Islam does have a problem with western values.  Whenever someone commits or tries to commit murder in the name of Allah, we are cautioned against “anti-Muslim backlash”.  So far, this backlash hasn’t made itself known.  The Islamic community is extremely vocal when it comes to its rights, making demands of the majority time and time again.  The demand tolerance, even approval.  Yet, when it comes to the issue of sensitivity to non-Muslims, such as in this case, they’re dead silent.  Not one of the GZ Mosque builders has come out and said, “Yes, I understand that some of you find this hurtful, and I’m sorry about that.  But we’re going to build it anyway.”  Instead, they’ve simply fallen back on the First Amendment (a notion that does not exist in any Islamic country in the world) and stubbornly refused to budge an inch.

What this suggests to me is that the Cordoba House is intended to be a Victory Mosque.  Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf isn’t a friend to America, and doesn’t seem terribly moderate to me, according to his statements.  We also don’t know where the funding for this mosque is coming from.  I’m certain that the Ground Zero Mosque is yet another battle the Islamists are fighting against the West.  It’s a shot across the bow.  How we respond to it will be another test of both American resolve and Islamic bloody-mindedness.  We’ve shown that we won’t try to outlaw it.  What we should do is fight it with ridicule.  Draw more cartoons depicting militant Islamists as the shrieking, backwards, tissue-skinned, murderous children they are.

The problem is that our media doesn’t have the courage to do that.  And our president has been his typically mealy-mouthed, pontificating self on the matter.  People have asked why Obama felt he had to weigh in on the subject, when it would have been smarter and more expedient to just not address it.  The answer is simple: he HAS to.  Just like in the Skip Gates controversy, when, absent the facts, he blabbed out that the police “acted stupidly,” the Obamessiah has to tell you what he thinks.  Because he’s smarter than you, you see.  He couldn’t not say anything about it.  It’s a characteristic of narcissists that they pontificate frequently and on all subjects, because they can’t imagine a world where you’re not sucking up their wisdom like life-giving pap.

The Muslim in charge of this project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, famously claimed that the U.S. was an “accessory to the [...]]]> Now that the Obamessiah has weighed in on the issue of building a mosque near the site where Muslims flew airplanes into the Twin Towers, it’s time for a little plain talk about the subject.

The Muslim in charge of this project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, famously claimed that the U.S. was an “accessory to the crime” of 9/11, and that Osama bin Laden was “made in the U.S.A.”  He also refuses to acknowledge Hamas as a terrorist organization, claiming that terrorism is a “complicated issue.” No it isn’t.  If this is the most moderate voice that the Muslims could come up with, then there’s a serious problem with Islam.

With that in mind, it’s also important to acknowledge that Muslims like to build mosques on places where they have achieved victory through force of arms.  No doubt that militant Islamists feel that destroying the Twin Towers and murdering almost 3,o00 people in the process is a triumph, especially in light of the fact that New Yorkers lack the courage to rebuild on the same site.  The proposed name, the Cordoba House, is deliberately provocative, as it refers to a famous Muslim victory over the Spanish.  The proposed opening date is September 11, 2011: the ten-year anniversary of the attacks.

Supporters of building the Ground Zero mosque like to claim that the First Amendment makes it perfectly legal to do so (and that if you disagree, you’re hateful, but we’ll address that later).  However, the First Amendment isn’t absolute.  My homeowner’s association contract doesn’t allow me to paint my house a certain color, for example.  There are laws about building bars near schools and churches.  Saying certain words in certain places is considered “hate speech” and you can be prosecuted for it.  There are decency laws that prevent people from absolutely exercising their supposed First Amendment right to publicly depict sex acts.  So the First Amendment claim is a dodge.  It’s not a First Amendment issue.  It’s a decency issue.

According to Islamists, President Obama, and everyone else who needs to show the world how inclusive and non-judgmental they are, not showing support for the Ground Zero mosque is hateful.  They claim to not understand how anyone could be against it except as a symptom of Islamophobia.  It insults our intelligence that these too-clever, morally preening imbeciles refuse to accept the idea that there’s a decency issue at stake, and that there may be some people who have a legitimate reason to be angry at the idea of Islamists building a victory temple at the same site where other Islamists murdered thousands of their countrymen.  Why not build a Shinto shrine at Pearl Harbor, or a Richard Wagner opera house at Auschwitz?  You have to give them credit, though: they’ve not backed down on their support.  The common human decency argument won’t move them.  And, as they’ve done for years and will continue to do for as long as it works, they’ll call you racist if you disagree.

The Obamessiah supports the mosque, and won’t even debate the decency issue, which shows how weak, vacillating, and completely at odds he is with most Americans and their values.  I’m surprised that he managed to find the time to speak about it in-between vacations.  I am willing to allow this, though: New Yorkers have elected politicians who support this mosque.  They still haven’t built anything on Ground Zero.  Is that’s how they want their little slice of heaven, they’re welcome to it.  Perhaps Obama’s former pastor was right: the chickens have come home to roost.  And you can’t make an Islamist omelet without breaking a few American eggs.

Or, alternatively, you can focus your attention on what two essentially meaningless politicians think. I mean, let’s get our priorities straight.

Here’s the money graf:

But what Espenshade and Radford found in regard to what they call “career-oriented activities” was truly shocking even to this hardened veteran of the campus ideological and cultural [...]]]> At the nation’s elite colleges.  This article, while long, exposes the cancer at the heart of diversity programs in the Ivy League.

Here’s the money graf:

But what Espenshade and Radford found in regard to what they call “career-oriented activities” was truly shocking even to this hardened veteran of the campus ideological and cultural wars. Participation in such Red State activities as high school ROTC, 4-H clubs, or the Future Farmers of America was found to reduce very substantially a student’s chances of gaining admission to the competitive private colleges in the NSCE database on an all-other-things-considered basis. The admissions disadvantage was greatest for those in leadership positions in these activities or those winning honors and awards. “Being an officer or winning awards” for such career-oriented activities as junior ROTC, 4-H, or Future Farmers of America, say Espenshade and Radford, “has a significantly negative association with admission outcomes at highly selective institutions.” Excelling in these activities “is associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds of admission.”

It’s disgusting even if it’s a little bit true.  The left-wing bias in university admissions makes a total mockery of the idea of actual diversity.  What we have instead is selection based on the right skin color.

Without seeing the Obamessiah’s college transcripts, we’ll never know if he was an affirmative action choice or not.  Left-wing social engineering is one of the most poisonous and pernicious elements extant in modern culture, and it must be exposed at every turn.  The health of this country is at stake.

During the interview Wednesday, when confronted with the anxiety that some Israelis feel toward him, Obama said that “some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion.”

“Ironically, I’ve got a Chief of Staff [...]]]> Those dumbass Jews don’t trust the Obamessiah because of his middle name:

During the interview Wednesday, when confronted with the anxiety that some Israelis feel toward him, Obama said that “some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion.”

“Ironically, I’ve got a Chief of Staff named Rahm Israel Emmanuel. My top political advisor is somebody who is a descendent of Holocaust survivors. My closeness to the Jewish American community was probably what propelled me to the U.S. Senate,” Obama said.

No, the Israelis don’t trust you because you’ve been nothing except hostile to Israel, and spent twenty years in the pew of a church led by a virulent anti-Semite.

The malignant narcissism of this president is absolutely mind-boggling.  It literally does not occur to him that there might be people out there with good reason to disagree with or distrust him.  His lack of class and grace are a cringing embarrassment to the office.

By talking openly about redistribution, Baucus and others have gone seriously off-message. [...]]]> I was thinking about posting more statements from individual Democrats supporting the idea that ObamaCare’s true purpose was to redistribute wealth from the less-deserving to the more deserving, but Byron York has gathered them all into one piece:

By talking openly about redistribution, Baucus and others have gone seriously off-message. Democrats knew there was no way they could ever sell a national health care bill to a skeptical public by basing their case on income inequality. That’s one reason they went to such lengths to argue — preposterously, in the view of most Americans — that the bill could cover 32 million currently uninsured people and still save the taxpayers money.

Through it all, Obama further lowers the office to which he was elected by naming individual Americans in a whine about how badly he’s being treated.  What’s enlightening and disturbing is that these leaders of the Democrat party are very comfortable telling us publicly that their true interest is in leveling that playing field.

Eventually, your outrage meter gets pegged in the red and just sticks there.  It’s pretty tiring.

The only thing you can come away with is that if you believe in free-market principles, personal responsibility over government authority, and charity over confiscation, don’t vote Democrat.  Party trumps person, and we are now witnessing the end result of what happens when you give the liberal left too much power.

The White House political and legislative operations were said to be livid with the announcement by several large U.S. companies that they were taking multi-million or as much as a billion dollar charges because of the new health-care law, the issue was front-and-center with [...]]]> I…I don’t believe it.

The White House political and legislative operations were said to be livid with the announcement by several large U.S. companies that they were taking multi-million or as much as a billion dollar charges because of the new health-care law, the issue was front-and-center with key lawmakers. By last Friday, AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere & Co., and AK Steel Holding Corp. had all announced that they were taking the one-time charges on their first-quarter balance sheets. More companies were expected to make similar announcements this week.

I do not believe it.  They’re lying partisans, the lot.  Probably racists, too.

On Friday White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett were calling the CEOs and Washington office heads of the companies that took the financial hits and attacked them for doing so. One Washington office head said that the White House calls were accusatory and “downright rude.”

No!  They were just…just zealous in their advocacy of the untrammeled good that is ObamaCare. No doubt President Obama could explain it better to them.

“Most of these people [in the Administration] have never had a real job in their lives. They don’t understand a thing about business, and that includes the President,” says a senior lobbyist for one of the companies that announced the charge. “My CEO sat with the President over lunch with two other CEOs, and each of them tried to explain to the President what this bill would do to our companies and the economy in general. First the President didn’t understand what they were talking about. Then he basically told my boss he was lying. Frankly my boss was embarrassed for him; he clearly had not been briefed and didn’t know what was in the bill.”

LIES! All lies.

This guy’s a liar, too.

Thanks to Ace for the pointer.

“Too often, much of late, the last couple three years, the mal-distribution of income in American is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy and the middle income class is left behind,” he said. “Wages have not kept up [...]]]> Max Baucus has the integrity to admit it:

“Too often, much of late, the last couple three years, the mal-distribution of income in American is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy and the middle income class is left behind,” he said. “Wages have not kept up with increased income of the highest income in America. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America.”

Rather than redefining socialism further and further toward capitalism, it’d be nice if the Democrat party and its supporters would just come right out and tell us how much they hate free-market principles.

“We’re going to take things away from you for the common good.”

Exactly.

Speaking without his suit jacket, Obama suggested that opposition springs from “fear-mongering and plenty of overheated rhetoric.”

He added: “You turn on the news, you’ll see the same folks are still shouting about how it’s going to be the end of the world because this bill passed. …. [...]]]> Here’s some more civility from Obama:

Speaking without his suit jacket, Obama suggested that opposition springs from “fear-mongering and plenty of overheated rhetoric.”

He added: “You turn on the news, you’ll see the same folks are still shouting about how it’s going to be the end of the world because this bill passed. …. Leaders of the Republican Party, they called the passage of this bill ‘Armageddon.’ Armageddon! End of freedom as we know it! So after I signed the bill I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling. Some cracks opening up in the Earth! Turned out it was a nice day!”

Petty.

Say what you like about George Bush, he wasn’t a petty little asshole like this.  What a cringing, graceless embarrassment of a boy he is.

Caterpillar Inc. said Wednesday it will take a $100 million charge to earnings this quarter to reflect additional taxes stemming from newly enacted U.S. health-care legislation.

The world’s largest construction equipment manufacturer by sales, warned last week that provisions in the legislation would subject the company [...]]]> Well, it’s costing Caterpillar $100,000,000 so far:

Caterpillar Inc. said Wednesday it will take a $100 million charge to earnings this quarter to reflect additional taxes stemming from newly enacted U.S. health-care legislation.

The world’s largest construction equipment manufacturer by sales, warned last week that provisions in the legislation would subject the company to federal income taxes on the subsidies it receives for providing prescription drug benefits for its retirees and their spouses.

Thanks to Hot Air for the pointer.

That’s just an isolated incident, right?

No:

Yesterday I posted a memo that Verizon sent to its employees concerning its view that the Democrats’ health-care bill would probably cause its costs to go up. Specifically, the memo keyed in on a change in the tax treatment of the Medicare Part D retiree drug subsidy. This is a subsidy that the government pays to employers that offer prescription-drug coverage to their retirees; it was created as part of the Medicare prescription-drug entitlement to encourage employers not to dump their retirees into the public system. As the Wall Street Journal editorial board reports today, the subsidy costs taxpayers $665 per person, “while the same Medicare coverage would cost $1,209.”

There are going to be many stories like this coming down the pike.

According to a CBS poll, most people want the Republican party to continue to fight ObamaCare.

Oh, and the Obamessiah Brain Trust who brought you the national horror story we call ObamaCare forgot to add kids with pre-existing conditions. You’d think that this brilliant, principled group of individuals would have added that bit.

Bottom line is that the socialist wing of the Democrat party has imposed a vastly unpopular law upon us that has already done some damage.  The party of  “spread the wealth around” is spreading it around, that’s certain.

My only consolation is the imagining of the butthurt of any Caterpillar and Verizon employees who voted for Obama.

UPDATE: One thing I forgot to add is the one greatest thing that ObamaCare has done so far is force the American citizen to buy a service that he doesn’t want from the federal government.  That’s huge.  While I understand that there are many of us who feel that the government does know best, that the government should be in charge of your life.  That your personal freedom should take a backseat to what the government says is best for you.  It’s a little unfair for you to demand that the rest of us bend over, spread the national cheeks, and hope that it doesn’t hurt too much, however.

Ace discusses this.

They all seem quite pleased about this whole thing.  I’d be pretty embarrassed, myself.