( – promoted by buhdydharma )
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Well. I was planning to do a pretty cool essay about the Big World Economic News today, to wit: that China’s now passed Japan as the world’s second largest economy. That’ll have to wait a day or three. I don’t think that either China or Japan are going anywhere. If you’re dying for a taste of that, though, earlier this afternoon I did work-up a Front Page post over at my blog, LetsJapan.Wordpress.Com on this: China’s Econ Passes Japan’s. Let’s All Take a Deep Breath, Shall We?‘
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What pushed that timely Essay/Post aside was this headline:
“Reid Against Plan to Build Mosque at Ground Zero.”
Continued below the fold…
Here’s the lede:
“WASHINGTON – The Senate’s top Democrat on Monday came out against plans to build a mosque near the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, moving away from President Barack Obama on the controversial election-year issue.
“Locked in a tight race, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid became the highest profile Democrat to respond to Obama, who last week backed the right for the developers to build a mosque near ground zero. . . .
Worm. Craven, cowardly, jelly-spined, worm. Reid, and what I’m sure will soon be an avalanche of “Democrats,” once again fear the likes of Sharron Angle, Fox News, Limbaugh and a host of imbeciles, bigots and hate-mongers more than they believe in demonstrating even a modicum of integrity and devotion, not only to Constitutional Law, but as importantly, to the Constitutional Ideal. Reid’s weasel words are textbook:
“‘The First Amendment protects freedom of religion,’ said Jim Manley, a Reid spokesman. ‘Senator Reid respects that, but thinks that the mosque should be built some place else.'”
Let’s stroll right on past the part where Milquetoast Harry didn’t have the manhood to say this himself, but rather had a stooge named “Manley” do it for him, and let’s sidle-up right next to where he tries to have it both ways: (1) I’m for ‘freedom of religion,’ (2) except when the practice thereof (in accordance to local zoning laws for structures and such) makes the bigots and racists and xenophobes angry.
Yeh, that’s a Profile in Courage, indeed.
I’m done with it. First Obama’s capitulation on Health Care Reform. Then on offshore drilling (how’d that work out, Mr. President?). Then on a comprehensive and meaningful energy bill. Then Gibbs. And now, after Obama, this is “the most powerful Democrat” in the United States. I simply don’t have words.
I’m done with ’em. I’ll still follow politics, but that’s it. To close I’ll again quote author & historian William Dalrymple in his tour de force The Last Mughal*:
“In a curious but very concrete way, the fundamentalism of both [Christian and Muslim] faiths have needed each other to reinforce each other’s prejudices and hatreds. The venom of one provides the lifeblood of the other.”
Thanks, Harry.
Get bent.
Mu
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*On the run-up to and events surrounding the Sepoy Uprising (against the British) in Delhi and across northern India in 1857, leading ultimately to the downfall of the ~350 year Mughal Dynasty.
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It’s difficult figuring out which is worse, y’know?
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as opposed to the people in the flyover who think they own it, I am more pissed about the hole in the ground than the mosque floor blocks away.
But that’s just me.
Btw, there is a strip bar right across the street from the old WTC site that is still open. I guess the First Church of Tits and Ass is acceptable, but not a mosque.
Go Merika!
about feelings as America sinks deeper into irrelevant
tabloidcartoon politics.… if I use your essay to ramble a bit. Right now I’m relaxing after work and spinning thoughts around.
I think it would be fabulous to have a mosque near the site of the destroyed trade towers. New York has always been a world city, and it’s been a long time since I’ve even thought of that since September 11.
I dunno, lots of folks have left sites like Daily Kos (and others, DK isn’t unique at all) because of pressures that were unfair or completely blocked any constructive work on the part of the poster, etc., etc.
Harry Reid is being subjected to around a trillion times as much pressure right now … all the politicians are. The rewards, however, are commensurate with that pressure, unlike with bloggers, lol, and so many are completely enthralled with that kind of possession of power.
Harry needs a vacation from politics. They all do. Just a sick atmosphere in our halls of power — even if there are individual politicians who are strong and have solid values, they also are corrupted after too long exposure.
Scarier than anthrax, I’d say. Like Pinche, I was in Midtown the day the towers fell. New York City is a world city. Neither Harry Reid nor the Republicans have any control over that.
… of something, its just the Senate is the wrong place.
an “Angle-Worm”?
And we have him as a leader? Good grief! It’s bad enough watching Obama thread the needle. Obama has a pair. Real ones, not some plastic, “nobody has to know” set.
In his case, I think some of that is warranted, though I don’t like it at all.
Reid?? If he wanted to, he could be driving the agenda home big, flogging on the asses non stop and leave a hero.
“My Friends In The Senate” –> That’s the problem. He’s more about the institution than he is the work product of it, and the impact on those of us, who took the time to do the civics, who put him there in the first place.
Coin Operated Democrats. We need them just long enough to replace them with Statesmen and Stateswomen. I would prefer these people be Progressives, but really, I would just take somebody who has a healthy character, and who isn’t owned.
I had to write my own rant today, before I read this, but I’m right here with you!
for peace and justice. A new language will emerge from the energies of multicultural communication and story telling.
This language will arise out of the family of woman-man in the jungle-forest-desert-plains-sea shores of renewal.
The corporate media power complex cannot block forever the real conversations of real people in a shrinking world.
Guns and bank accounts and feudal laws will implode in a shrinking world.
Drones and fear cannot stop the march to dialogue, the march to a new language. State Education will not be able to stop the desire to become human on the part of students, to discover themselves within others; not to discover competitors and rivals in others. Capitalism needs to control pedagogy to survive and metastasize. The current movement to make education “market based” and teachers “indentured servants” will fail. I cannot see parents allowing their children to become consumer robots and propaganda zombies. But they must find time to engage in dialogue with real people who still possess intuitive and human sensibilities.
I see major cultural confusion and disorientation in the
near future until people learn what is important to talk about. The media will burn itself out. Knowledge will be constructed by people, not fed to them. And I am a horrible pessimist. I have no idea where the above came from.