By Katrina Trinko

The New York Post has been digging around the financial background of the Ground Zero mosque. What they’ve discovered is that, far from being clear and transparent, the sale had plenty of oddities. For instance, mosque developer Sharif El-Gamal paid just $4.8 million for the building — despite the fact that another developer had offered $18 million in 2007. More from the Post:

Some 30 offers showered on the Pomerantz family in what was an overheated downtown real-estate market in 2007, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.

Yet Mitani previously told The Post the building, a former Burlington Coat Factory store that was damaged in the 9/11 attacks, was a tough sell. She said she was in debt and desperate to unload it after her husband’s death and insisted she had no buyers other than El-Gamal.

Some of the offers were a mere flash in the pan, but others were legitimate, including a $17 million cash deal from one developer, the source said. …

But the Pomerantz family — for reasons that remain unclear — rejected the offers. …

Property in the area hovered between $250 to $290 a square foot. El-Gamal purchased the 45-47 Park Place property for the rock-bottom price of just over $100 per square foot.

If this wasn’t odd enough, the plot thickens in today’s story:

The owners of the former Burlington Coat Factory near Ground Zero — who sold the site for a song to the developer of the proposed mosque there — wound up investing in a $45.7 million deal with him four months later, city records show. …

It is evident that after the Pomerantz family accepted El-Gamal’s lower offer, several of the family members were eager to do business with him again.

When El-Gamal’s company, Soho Properties, plunked down a total of $45.7 million for a commercial building at 31 W. 27th St. in Chelsea, Mitani and two other family members chipped in some of the capital.

The widow invested $200,000, her late husband’s estate coughed up $500,000, and the couple’s son, Seth Pomerantz, 25 kicked in $200,000, real-estate records show.

And if the Ground Zero mosque is built, congregants better hope that El-Gamal isn’t the one managing the place. The Post reports that El-Gamal’s apartments aren’t exactly run with a safety-first philosophy:

The developer behind the planned Ground Zero mosque already has a lousy record with the city Buildings Department — racking up $24,650 in fines for safety and construction violations at a Washington Heights apartment building that his firm owns.

The violations involve some of the department’s more serious charges, from cracks running the height of the six-story, brick walk-up to blocked exits and fire escapes, falling mortar and an unstable chimney, city records show.

“Every time it rains, I set a pan on my bed and another one on the floor,” said Don McCants, 61, a truck driver and longtime tenant of the building owned by mosque developer Sharif El-Gamal and his firm, Soho Properties.

“It’s no drip, drip, drip, either,” he lamented. “It comes down fast.” …

The city Department of Housing, Preservation and Development also has issues with the property, slapping it with 47 violations involving health and maintenance issues.

The violations, all of which are still open, range from unabated lead paint to plumbing malfunctions to problems with falling plaster and missing floorboards.

El-Gamal’s in good company here — last week, NRO’s Dan Foster visited Imam Rauf’s apartments and found similarly dismal conditions.

At any rate, it’s becoming clearer why some Democrats support the mosque — tracking El-Gamal and Rauf’s building violations probably creates jobs for several bureaucrats!

Bloomberg Still Wants Ground Zero Mosque Even After Hamas Connection

Home – by Mr.Pinko – September 7, 2010 – 11:16 UTC – Be first to Comment!

WTF?! Bloomberg Still Wants Ground Zero Mosque Even After Hamas Connection.
(more…)

from Powerline

As Scott noted this morning, Feisal Abdul Rauf has taken to the opinion pages of the New York Times to reiterate his intent to build the Ground Zero mosque. Rauf is no stranger to those pages. On February 27, 1979, the Times published Rauf’s letter to the editor in which he criticized American for failing to apologize to Iran for past misdeeds. Rauf added that “the revolution in Iran was inspired by the very principles of individual rights and freedom that Americans ardently believe in.”

When it reported on this letter, the Wall Street Journal, trying to be fair to Rauf, wrote that at the time of his letter, “Iran’s revolution hadn’t revealed all of its violent, messianic character.” But a closer analysis of the timing of Rauf’s letter refutes this excuse and casts the imam in a worse light than the Journal thinks.

For, as Barry Rubin, has pointed out, Rauf’s public cheering of the revolution came just weeks after the Ayatollah Khomeini returned triumphantly to Iran. To be precise, the Ayatollah returned on February 1, 1979. Welcomed back by a crowd of several million, he immediately became the undisputed leader of the revolution. On the very day of his return, Khomeini appointed a new prime minister, Mehdi Bazargan, and told his followers it was their duty to God to obey him. Here are his words:

I hereby pronounce Bazargan as the Ruler, and since I have appointed him, he must be obeyed. The nation must obey him. This is not an ordinary government. It is a government based on the sharia. Opposing this government means opposing the sharia of Islam … Revolt against God’s government is a revolt against God. Revolt against God is blasphemy.
(more…)

The Senate editor of The Cook Political Report, Jennifer Duffy, notes that the toss-up races don’t always break evenly. She points to the Democratic wave year of 2006, when the party won 89 percent of the nine races that The Cook Political Report rated as toss-ups before the election. In 2008, Democrats won 78 percent of the toss-up races, while in 2004, a good year for Republicans, the GOP won 89 percent of the most competitive races. In other words, these wave elections produce a cascading effect in which the close races often break disproportionately toward the wave.

For reasons unexplained they don’t mention 1994. I have to imagine that that, too, was a year in which the overwhelming majority of “50/50 tossups” in fact went in one direction.

By the way, I am using The War Between the Undead States sort of unfairly, in sort of a strawman sort of way. We’ve discussed this (very pleasantly) in the comments before, and he agrees with the basic principle. But… I don’t know, I forget why, he still doubts this basic tendency will occur. He sort of notes, on an intellectual level, that this happens, but in his gut, in his intuition, it isn’t really there.

About the Spin: Some readers are worried about setting expectations too high, because, if we then win, but fall short of the bar we’ve set, the MFM/DNC gets to spin it as a loss.

That doesn’t really scare me for the same reason The Black Knight’s claims of “flesh wound” don’t bother me. Yeah, okay, you still have your had. Score. Wow, you like totally won and stuff.

also:

U.S. College Pushes Anti-American, Pro-Islam Book

-By Warner Todd Huston

We send our students to college to learn what they need to know to become good American citizens. From this knowledge we hope that they will realize useful, maybe even successful, lives. Perhaps they’ll even gain personal improvement through introspection from it all. At least that’s what we used to think. Apparently, these days we send kids to college to be trained to hate the U.S.A. and at least in the case of Brooklyn College to learn that today Muslims are treated as badly as the African Americans or the Japanese internees of our past.

Brooklyn college has assigned all incoming freshmen to read a book titled, “How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America,” by Moustafa Bayoumi. The book is a series of vignettes imparting the immigration stories of seven Muslim Americans and their claims of the discrimination they’ve met in a post 9/11 America. Bayoumi could have written an uplifting tale of the freedoms America offers, but instead it is little else but an attack on America.

The story supposedly regales us of the lives of Muslims who have “found themselves part of the newest suspect class in the United States.” Bayoumi, also a Brooklyn College English professor, absurdly claims that the Muslims in his book — and by extension throughout America — have gone “from simply invisible to being regarded with suspicion and even actively pursued” by the U.S. government.

The New York Daily News leads us through Bayoumi’s conclusions:

Bayoumi sees America more darkly. In the book’s afterword, he writes that “Muslims and Arabs are scrutinized for sedition at every turn,” that Arab-American life includes “substantial government surveillance and repression,” that “today, everyone – immigrant and citizen, activist and spectator – has become vulnerable,” that “spies and government informants have penetrated Muslim-American communities” and that “torture has been normalized into American culture.”

In sum, he asserts, “What we are currently living through is the slow creep of imperial high-handedness into the rest of American society, performed in the name of national security and facilitated through the growth of racist policies.”

Bayoumi is obviously a raging anti-American. He outrageously believes that Arab Americans are facing the same situation that Japanese Americans faced when FDR ordered their internment during WWII.

In an interview with Penguin Books, Bayoumi said the following:

I believe we will come to see this period as being gripped by a similar kind of mass hysteria that fueled the Palmer Raids and Japanese Internment. What’s depressing is that this would happen in our post Civil Rights era, when I thought we would have learned from the mistakes of the past.

This is flat out nonsense. Muslims face nothing like the sort of fear and discrimination Japanese Americans faced during WWII. In fact, Muslim Americans today face nothing so bad as the race hatred that Jewish Americans face today. FBI stats show that Jews are several times more likely to be the victims of racial and religious discrimination than are Muslims. Muslim discrimination barely registers as a blip on the FBI’s stats.

The last year that the FBI has released full data for hate crimes is 2008, but it shows that hate crimes against Jews far out number those against Muslims.

FBI Hate Crime Statistics: Religious bias

* Of the 1,732 victims of anti-religious hate crimes: 66.1 percent were targeted because of an offender’s anti-Jewish bias.
* 7.5 percent were victims because of an anti-Islamic bias.
* 5.1 percent were victims because of an anti-Catholic bias.
* 3.6 percent were victims because of an anti-Protestant bias.
* 0.8 percent were targeted because of an anti-Atheist/Agnostic bias.
* 2.8 percent were victims because of a bias against other religions (anti-other religion).
* 4.0 percent were victims because of a bias against groups of individuals of varying religions (anti-multiple religions, group).

In light of these stats, Bayoumi looks like a wild-eyed polemicist instead of an aggrieved minority.

Yet here is this author making these absurd claims anyway. Worse his book was chosen by an American college as an important text for incoming freshmen and his lies raised to the heights of important “literature.”

This is what Brooklyn College is teaching its students, that Muslims are being treated as badly as were Japanese Americans who were rounded up by the thousands and sent to camps under armed guards. Bayoumi also used the example of the Palmer Raids, a campaign set in motion during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency when some 500 known American left-wing radicals were rounded up and forcibly deported.

So, where are the concentration camps for Muslims that this evil United State has created to oppress Muslims? Where are the hundreds of Muslims forcibly deported? Where are the mounting cases of anti-Muslim discrimination in these United States?

There aren’t any.

Because of this incident, Brooklyn College has already lost the support of one wealthy alumnus. Bruce Kessler, Class of 1968, has cut the college out of his will because of the assignment of Bayoumi ‘s book to incoming freshmen.

Kessler says that Bayoumi is a “radical pro-Palestinian professor.”

Looking over Bayoumi’s screed it’s hard to fault Kessler’s logic.

Islam as it is practiced today can never co-exist with Democracy, Woman’s Rights, and Freedom of Religion. We need to face it.

kurdish Girl Stoned to Death

Honour Killings

Suicide Bomber Caught at Israeli Checkpoint

and Finally:

A 16 Year Old Iranian Girl Executed by Islamic Police

From the New York Post:

He’s the religious leader of the planned, controversial Ground Zero mosque — but across the Hudson, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is known as an alleged slumlord.

At buildings in Union City and Palisades Park, where Rauf reportedly got tax dollars to renovate low-income apartments, tenants yesterday said their gripes about their lousy housing conditions have been ignored.

“Why doesn’t he help the tenants he has before he builds a new place, claiming he wants to help people?” said a disgusted Jamie Barillas, who lives in a Rauf-owned apartment at 2206 Central Ave. in Union City.

Now let us see.

Yesterday we learned from the New York Post: “Sharif El-Gamal, the leading organizer behind the mosque and community center near Ground Zero, owes $224,270.77 in back property tax on the site, city records show. El-Gamal’s company, 45 Park Place Partners, failed to pay its half-yearly bills in January and July, according to the city Finance Department. The delinquency is a possible violation of El-Gamal’s lease with Con Edison, which owns half of the proposed building site on Park Place. El-Gamal owns the other half but must pay taxes on the entire parcel.”

Now this.

And of course Imam Raif has political connections with Democratic Senator Bob Menendez.

Something’s up.

This looks more and more like an old-fashioned money maker rather than some religious, inter-faith, some-on-people-now-let’s-get-together kumbaya.

Skeptical?

Color me CYNICAL.

From Powerline

Inside the Orlando mosque

The video below is an investigative report on the the June 2009 fundraiser for Hamas held at Masjid Al-Rahman mosque in Orlando, Florida. Featuring “that tool” George Galloway, the fundraiser was intended to raise money for Galloway’s Viva Palestina, then funneling money openly to the Islamist terrorist movement of Hamas in Gaza.

Big Peace comments that the video also serves as a backgrounder on the Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the United States including the Muslim American Society and the Islamic Society of North America, both unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation prosecution. To this list I would add the North American Islamic Trust, which holds the title to many such mosques.

Patrick Poole asks where the feds are now. Let’s go to the tape.

also:

Our Goof, the President

It wouldn’t be fair to say that President Obama is dumb, but I think it is accurate to say that he is a goof. Thus his style, formerly described as analytical…cerebral…aloof…now appears deer-in-the-headlights clueless. The Drudge Report, in the unfair but funny style that it sometimes adopts, contrasts our President with Russia’s de facto ruler:

That’s unfair, but this isn’t: why can’t Obama be a man and admit that his predecessor, George Bush, deserves credit for the surge that has made possible the troop withdrawal for which Obama desperately takes credit? Byron York documents the Obama administration’s contortions on Iraq:

At Monday’s White House briefing, spokesman Robert Gibbs gave reporters a preview of President Obama’s speech on Iraq. Obama will apparently take credit for withdrawing U.S. troops — “We are completing a drawdown of almost 100,000 troops that…many did not think was possible,” Gibbs said — but is unlikely to acknowledge any special role played by George W. Bush’s troop surge. …

“Does he believe that President Bush deserves any credit for the surge, laying the groundwork for troop withdrawal?” a reporter asked Gibbs.

“I’d point you to the many comments that the president has made throughout a number of years about the role that increasing the number of our troops has played, just as a Sunni Awakening has played, just as a better political environment has played,” Gibbs said. “I think that the president will get a chance to talk about a lot of that.”

Later, another reporter tried again. “Does the president believe the surge worked?”
(more…)

From Gateway Pundit

The controversial imam behind the Ground Zero Mosque says that America is worse than Al-Qaeda.

Jason Mattera at Human Events reported:

New audio has surfaced of the imam behind the controversial mosque near Ground Zero allegedly telling an audience overseas that the United States has been far more deadly than al-Qaeda. “We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non Muslims,” Feisal Abdul Rauf said at a 2005 lecture sponsored by the University of South Australia. After discussing the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Rauf went on to argue that America is to blame for its testy relationship with Islamic countries.

“What complicates the discussion, intra-Islamically, is the fact that the West has not been cognizant and has not addressed the issues of its own contribution to much injustice in the Arab and Muslim world.” The audio was uncovered by blogger Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf:

“We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non Muslims. You may remember that the US-led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations. And when Madeleine Albright, who has become a friend of mine over the last couple of years, when she was Secretary of State and was asked whether this was worth it, said it was worth it.

He sounds like your typical leftist, blaming America for Saddam Hussein’s actions that caused the sanctions.

Ground Zero Mosque Planner: Americans Are Bigots

A leader of the planned Ground Zero Victory Mosque told told Christiane Amanpour this weekend that Americans are bigots.
This Week reported, Via FOX Nation:

Daisy Khan, who is spearheading the mosque project with her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, compared the opposition to the mosque to anti-Semitism.

FOX Nation reported:

A leader of a planned Muslim community center near Manhattan’s Ground Zero compared opposition to the project to the persecution of Jews, in comments that could add to the controversy over the center’s proposed site.

“We are deeply concerned, because this is like a metastasized antisemitism,” said Daisy Khan, who is spearheading the project with her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. “It’s beyond Islamophobia. It’s hate of Muslims.”

Ms. Khan, appearing on ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday, vowed to push ahead with plans to build a 15-story complex two blocks from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in lower Manhattan, saying there was “too much at stake.” Read more…

Moving Islamic Center ‘Not’ on the Table for Now, Backer Says

In an exclusive interview on “This Week,” Daisy Khan, one of the main backers of the mosque and Islamic community center near ground zero, told Christiane Amanpour that moving the project to another site is not currently an option they are considering.

“So is moving [the center] on the table still?” Amanpour asked.

“Right now it’s not until we consult with all our stakeholders,” Khan said.

Amanpour asked Khan if America was Islamophobic.

“This is like a metastasized anti-Semitism, that’s what we feel right now,” Khan said. “It’s not even Islamophobia, it’s beyond Islamophobia; it’s hate of Muslims. And we are deeply concerned.”

From Powerline

Following up on Time Magazine’s article arguing that American may be Islamophobic, the Washington Post takes its stab at pressing the indictment. Post writer Annie Gowen focuses mostly on opposition to a proposed sprawling Islamic center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The Post claims that opposition is intense, but it presents no data on where overall public opinion in the area stands. Thus, the Post apparently has no idea whether the headline of the story that appeared in the print edition — “Nowhere near Ground Zero, but no more welcome” — is accurate.

The Post does refer to a poll that appeared in the Time article finding that 43 percent of Americans hold unfavorable views of Muslims. But which Muslims were the respondents referring to when they answered? Was it the Muslims they know personally or the Muslims involved with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial? Was it the Muslims who cheered the 9/11 attacks or the Muslims who condemned them? Was it the Muslim population in peaceful Indonesia or the Muslim population in Gaza? Was it the Iranian dissidents or the Iranian government?

The Post notes that 25 percent of respondents said that most Muslims are not patriotic Americans. If this answer to an empirical question is incorrect (I assume it is, but don’t really know), the conclusion should be that a relatively small, though certainly not de minimis, percentage of Americans showed bias in their answer to this question. The conclusion should not be that America as a whole is Islamophobic; if anything, the opposite conclusion better fits this piece of data.

The Post acknowledges that the overall level of anti-Muslim sentiment hasn’t shifted much as a result of the Ground Zero Mosque controversy. But it quotes unnamed “religious scholars and other experts” who find the change in tone “striking.” That’s certainly possible, given the “in your face” nature of the decision to build a mosque on the site of a building that was damaged by the deadly 9/11 attack. But if overall sentiment hasn’t changed, one wonders why Time and the Post are suddenly suggesting that Americans are Islamophobes.

In the end, of course, the question comes down to how one defines Islamophobia. If it means disliking American Muslims because of their religion, then I don’t think the charge sticks. If it means disliking a good deal of what many Muslims are doing in the wider world, and seeing some sort of a connection between that conduct and the religion of Islam, then Americans may well be Islamophobic. But we would be fools if we weren’t.

By Barry Rubin*

The current debate over the roots of Islamist revolution, clashes in the Middle East, and conflicts between forces in that region and the West involves two critical issues of interpretation:

First, is there a threat to the West from groups whose members are Muslims or does the fault arise from Western policies and shortcomings which, if altered, would make any conflict disappear?

Second, if there is a threat does it stem from Islam as religion or Islamism as political philosophy?

It is important to understand that revolutionary Islamists do draw on mainstream, accepted, and sacred Muslim texts. Their argument has the potential to be just as “legitimate” in believers’ eyes as does the contrary view. At the same time, though, Islam as a religion is not the threat, even though it is the threat’s source and rationale.

The best image to use in order to understand this situation is neither to see the car’s driver (Islam) as inherently bad (as does the “Islam is the threat” camp) or inherently good but facing a would-be hijacker (the “Islam is a religion of peace” camp). A more accurate view is of a battle over the steering wheel by contenders who both have a claim to ownership. Both may be reckless drivers but the main danger is the Islamists, those who want to run us over and then drive the car and all its passengers over a cliff. (more…)

Let the Mideast nuclear arms race begin.

The news this week that Iran started its Bushehr nuclear reactor provoked two other regional powers to make their own public statements. The Sudanese theocracy was the latest regime to announce they will move forward on their peaceful nuclear reactor.
Israel National News reported:

Sudanese media reported Sunday that officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will visit the country this week to discuss Khartoum’s plans to import a “peaceful nuclear reactor.” The announcement followed a breakthrough in Iran’s nuclear program over the weekend, as engineers began loading fuel rods into the Bushehr reactor.

Sudanese leaders established a nuclear program in early 2010, according to state news agency SUNA, and they plan to build the country’s first nuclear power station in 2020. They say the program is necessary in order to provide electricity to all of the country’s citizens, many of whom live in areas with no electric grid.

Iran’s senior leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in April that Iran is prepared to help Sudan create a nuclear program by sharing both knowledge and technology. The two countries share close economic and political ties; both are Islamic theocratic states.

Likewise, Egyptian president Mubarak announced this week that his country will announce plans for their own nuclear plant.
UPI reported:

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is preparing to announce plans to construct the country’s first nuclear power plant, an official said.

An unnamed source told the Egyptian newspaper Al Masry-al-Youm Mubarak is likely to name Dabaa as the site for the country’s first nuclear power plant Monday.

and:

Constitution is Islamic? Really?

The rhetoric from the left and the Muslims continues to heat up over the Victory Mosque — how Osama bin laden will view the 13-story community center planned for a site two blocks from Ground Zero.

We have Frank Rich at the New York Times saying dissent undermines General Petraeus, who was called “General Betray Us” in an ad that the New York Times ran at a great discount in 2007 when liberals said dissent was patriotic.
(more…)

From Gateway Pundit

US taxpayers are forking out $16,000 to pay for Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s three-nation outreach trip to the Mideast. This is the same imam who is behind the Ground Zero Victory Mosque and who blamed the US for the 9-11 attacks.
Via Breitbart:

AP News reported:

American taxpayers will pay the imam behind plans for a mosque near the Manhattan site of the Sept. 11 attacks $3,000 in fees for a three-nation outreach trip to the Middle East that will cost roughly $16,000, the State Department said Wednesday.

The department said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf will get a daily $200 honorarium for the 15-day tour to Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which is intended to promote religious tolerance.

Airfare is included, as well as the standard federal government per diem for expenses and lodging in each of the cities he will visit, spokesman P.J. Crowley said. Those per diem rates range from nearly $400 to nearly $500, according to official documents.

The imam’s organization, The Cordoba Initiative, referred questions on the matter to the State Department.

Rauf starts his tour Thursday in Bahrain and ends it in the United Arab Emirates Sept. 2. At each stop he is expected to discuss Muslim life in America and promote religious tolerance. He will not be allowed to raise funds for the mosque on the trip, Crowley said.

and:

Before his 9th Vacation, Obama passes the buck again:

Obama Blames Democrats For Economic Stall

from Redstate

Andrew Malcolm notes that prior to King Louis Mr. Obama heading off on his ninth vacation he blamed Congressional Democrats for the economic stall.

The jobs bill that is stalled in Congress would completely eliminate taxes on key investments in small businesses. It would allow small business owners to write off more expenses. And it would make it easier for community banks to do more lending to small businesses, while allowing small firms to take out larger SBA loans with fewer fees, which countless entrepreneurs have told me would make a big difference in their companies. I’d also like to point out this legislation is fully paid for and will not add one single dime to our deficit.

Now, he didn’t precisely say Democrats, but we know that is the case. After all, they control both the House and Senate. They’ve been able to pass a stimulus bill, a health care bill, a financial deform bill, and all those other glorious bills the left has demanded.

But they cannot help small businesses, which are the economic engine of this country. Why? Small businesses aren’t unionized, so why bother.

also:

Democrats Told To Stop Campaigning On Obamacare

The Politico headline is actually New Dem message: ‘Improve’ health care, don’t talk cost , but that is not wholly what is going on. What is going on is a recognition from the Democrats that after a year of trying to sell Obamacare as a panacea of right thinking and improvement, the voters headed to the polls in November disagree and are angry.

Consequently, the Politico notes that Democrats are abandoning all pretenses of selling Obamacare to the public and have cut and run back to “if you don’t replace us with the Republicans, we promise we will improve it.”

The confidential presentation, available in full here and provided to POLITICO by a source on the call, suggests that Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage, as its benefits became clear and rhetoric cooled. Instead, the presentation is designed to win over a skeptical public, and to defend the legislation — and in particular the individual mandate — from a push for repeal.

The presentation concedes that groups typically supportive of Democratic causes — people under 40, non-college-educated women and Hispanic voters — have not been won over by the plan. Indeed, it stresses repeatedly that many are unaware that the legislation has passed, an astonishing shortcoming in the White House’s all-out communications effort.

Note just how bad it must be for the Democrats and their messaging if “many are unaware that [Obamacare] has passed.” This is consistent willful naivety by the Democrats. The public that will most likely vote does know Obamacare passed and they are mad as all get out because of it.

And the kicker — the revised talking points counsel that Democrats should avoid making the claim that Obamacare will reduce costs and cut the deficit. In other words, the two main selling points are being tossed out the window.

also:

More than a mosque, indeed

From Powerline

Those who support the building of a mosque at Ground Zero have offered a number of arguments in favor of doing so. The original rationale — that the mosque and related facilities would promote healing and interfaith cooperation – was always suspect. It collapsed entirely once it became clear that many Americans see the construction of a mosque at this location — where the landing gear from one of the 9/11 planes fell on a building — as rubbing salt in the wounds left by 9/11.
(more…)

Vinod Kumar

Having worked in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and the home of its most extreme form, Wahhabism, I was shocked that a New York City neighborhood community board, in its ignorance, recently voted 29 to 1 to support a request to build a mosque and a Muslim center near Ground Zero.

Muslims have always built mosques on the sites of their conquests. The Prophet Muhammad himself made the Ka’aba, a pagan pantheon, into a mosque after he captured Mecca in 630 CE. The Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem was deliberately built near the Temple Mount, the holiest places in Judaism. The Ummayad mosque in Damascus was built on the site of the Church of Saint John. Babri mosque in Ayodhya, India was built by demolishing a Hindu temple at the site of Hinduism’s Lord Rama’s birthplace. They built mosques on the sites of thousands of temples throughout India.

The request to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center is not accidental. It is astute and deliberate, as is the decision to call the place Cordoba House. Cordoba is city in Spain that resonates mightily in Muslim history. It was the capital of the Islamic empire in Spain. It was the place where Islam established its first caliphate in Europe. The Grand Cordoba Mosque was built where a Visigoth Christian church stood.
(more…)

from the Jerusalem Post

WASHINGTON – Israel has only mere days to launch an attack on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor if Russia makes good on its plan to deliver fuel there this weekend, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton warned Tuesday.

He said that once Russia has loaded the fuel into the reactor — slated for Saturday – Israel would no longer be willing to strike for fear of triggering widespread radiation in an attack.

“This is a very, very big victory for Iran,” Bolton told The Jerusalem Post. “This is a huge threshold.”

Bolton, who also once oversaw US non-proliferation policy, said that when Russia announced the plans to load the fuel last Friday, “the element of surprise was essentially taken away” from Israeli calculations.

Bolton noted that he doesn’t “have a clue” as to whether Israel would actually attack, but he said, “If Israel was right to destroy the Osiraq reactor, is it right to allow this one to continue? You can’t have it both ways.”

Israel took out Iraq’s Osiraq reactor during a stealth mission in 1981. It is also believed to have conducted a similar strike on an alleged Syria nuclear site in 2007.

Russia signed a contract with Iran to construct the Bushehr reactor in 1995, but has several times delayed completion. In announcing the long-overdue fuel installation, which should make Bushehr operational in September, Russia did not indicate why it was going ahead with the final stages now.

In addition to Bushehr — for which Russia says it has guarantees it will receive back the spent fuel, the material needed to make a nuclear bomb — Iran has its own uranium enrichment facilities.

Iran expert Ilan Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council said that the uranium enrichment plants are the real backbone of Iranian efforts and expenditures to get a nuclear weapons capability, and he suspected that they, rather than Bushehr, would be Israel’s primary targets in any attack.

He suggested that Bolton was setting up a “straw man” by focusing on the fuel delivery to the Bushehr reactor.

“It’s not at all clear that Bushehr would be a high value target because it’s only tangentially related to any conceivable Iranian nuclear weapons program,” he said. “My suspicion is this isn’t a game changer. This isn’t going to give Iran enough fissile material for a bomb overnight.”

Berman added that since Bushehr is the most public Iranian nuclear facility, and therefore well monitored by international inspectors, it was also a less likely candidate for use by Iran to construct a bomb, though he nevertheless said if it became operational it would be “an enormous PR coup for the Iranians.”

Bolton dismissed the idea that international inspectors would contain the threat from the Bushehr reactor, pointing to instances inspectors had been kicked out.

He also said it was unlikely that Israel would attack Bushehr now and make another sortie against the enrichment facilities in later months because that would be a much more challenging task. For one thing, he point out that an attack on Bushehr would likely spur the Russians to transfer to Iran advanced missile defense systems it has agreed to sell Tehran but refrained from actually delivering.

and:

Radical Pelosi Calls For Investigation of Ground Zero Victory Mosque Opposition (Audio)

also;

Hugh Hewitt: Clip and save until November 2

By: Hugh Hewitt

November’s elections are undeniably party elections, as the two major parties clearly have split in profound, undeniable ways.

If you favor all or most of Obamacare, you should vote for every Democrat in every election, as Obamacare represents a victory for the entire Democratic Party organization, one it has been seeking since 1993.

If, on the other hand, you oppose all or most of Obamacare, or even just the unconstitutional individual mandate that requires every American to buy health insurance, then vote for every Republican at every level of government, so as to fully repudiate the Democratic Party that has foisted this job-killing and economy-chilling disaster on us all.

Many Democrats will try to flee their party’s legacy in this area, just as they will want to distance themselves from the failed $850 billion “stimulus” and the seizure of General Motors by the government.

Many Democrats will also want to try to avoid the president’s endorsement of the mosque at ground zero, the left’s war against marriage, and the Democrat-applauded actions of an activist, manipulative federal judge’s bizarre show trial and tortured opinion in the Proposition 8 case, as well as his post-decision effort to deny an appeal to defenders of California’s state constitution.

Democrats want to avoid their party leadership’s absolute commitment to ruinous and massive tax increases at the start of 2011, just as many Democrats want to shed responsibility for the president’s decision to sue Arizona over that state’s rather modest attempt to help plug the porous border.

But the president’s Department of Justice can only be overseen by congressional committees, which are all governed by Democratic congressmen who hold their jobs by the favor of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. So a vote for any Democrat at any level is an endorsement of a party that refuses to act with resolve on the border fence that is the outward and effective manifestation of an inner resolve to secure the border against the growing chaos of the evolving Somalia to our south.

The Democratic Party as a whole is also responsible for the fanaticism of the global warming cultists who are now operating through the unelected and unsupervised bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency to impose a massive federal regulatory scheme on businesses across the land, a naked power grab necessitated because 41 Republicans refused to be bullied into any version of cap and tax in the Senate. That’s the Democratic way — seize by administrative diktat or court order what you cannot gain via legitimate legislative victory.

If you favor keeping what remains of the free-enterprise system and you embrace the belief that Congress, not bureaucrats, ought to decide when that system is to be burdened with regulatory controls, then vote for every Republican at every level.

The same chasm separates Democrats from Republicans on a host of other issues, from defense spending Iran policy, the support of Israel and the so-called “card check” law that would end secret balloting in union elections.
(more…)

Not a big fan of the video or the glam-rock thing, but I love the song.

also:

Unreal…Obama Tells Supporters: “I’ve Never Been More Confident That Our Nation Is Headed in Right Direction”

From Gateway Pundit

Worst. President. Ever.
Less than one week ago the Obama Administration announced that the July deficit totaled $165 billion…
That’s more than the Bush deficit for the entire year of 2007.

During the Bush years, despite the 2000 Recession, the attacks on 9-11, the stock market scandals, Hurricane Katrina, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration was able to reduce the budget deficit from 412 billion dollars in 2004 to 162 billion dollars in 2007, a sixty percent drop.

In 2004 the federal budget deficit was 412 billion dollars. In 2005 it dropped to 318 billion dollars. In 2006 the deficit dipped to 248 billion dollars. And, in 2007 it fell below 200 billion to 162 billion dollars. During the Bush years the average unemployment rate was 5.2 percent, the economy saw the strongest productivity growth in four decades and there was robust GDP growth.

After an unheard of record deficit last year of $1.4 Trillion the economy is on track to experience a $1.47 Trillion deficit this year.

Unemployment is at record levels.

But, that didn’t stop Barack Obama from telling supporters today that he’s never been more confident that the US is going in the right direction.

My FOX DC reported:

President Barack Obama said Tuesday that he has “never been more confident that our nation is headed in the right direction.”

“We are doing what is needed to move forward, and we’re doing what’s necessary not just to rebuild the economy for the short term, we want to rebuild it for the long term,” the president said at a Seattle fundraiser for Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash).

Obama said his administration will “keep fighting as hard as we can for as long as it takes to turn this economy around,” adding, “The United States does not play for second place – we play for first.”

He also railed against Republicans for attempting to impede his efforts to rebuild the economy.

“Their slogan is ‘no we can’t.’ That’s really inspiring, this vision they have for the future,” the president joked. “Gives you a little pep in your step when you hear it.”

Yeah, America is going in the right direction… if you want the economy to collapse.

and:

Democrats Protest Glenn Beck Rally Spot but Support Ground Zero Mosque?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The intellectual dishonesty of Democrats is simply breathtaking. To show exactly how out of whack Democrat’s ideology is, they are protesting the site and date of a Glenn Beck rally over his perceived “insensitivity” but on the other hand seem wholly unbothered by the mosque planned on being built at Ground Zero.

Purported civil rights leaders on the Democrat side of the aisle are all upset over the fact that Glenn Beck has planned a rally to be held in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. 47 years to the day after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. (more…)

From Powerline

Here is what President Obama said Friday night at the White House iftar dinner in front of a room full of Muslims regarding the Ground Zero Megamosque (GZM):

Recently, attention has been focused on the construction of mosques in certain communities – particularly in New York. Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan. The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country. The pain and suffering experienced by those who lost loved ones is unimaginable. So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. 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 anyone else in this country. 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. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.

Obama carefully read his speech, including this statement. When he got to this passage, he spoke slowly, with some vehemence and condescension. Regarding these remarks, as the late, great William Buckley used to say, a few observations.

1. Obama’s tone was not one calculated to persuade. He both hectored and belittled those who oppose the GZM. If you respectfully beg to differ with Obama, it is hard to like the persona Obama had on display Friday night.

2. Obama supported the GZM in his usual style, in which his position is juxtaposed with a straw man of his choosing. It is an unappealing rhetorical habit that is made even more unappealing when applied to an issue on which people of good faith obviously differ with him.

3. Obama’s statement begs the question posed by the GZM. No one has questioned the right of Muslims to practice their religion the same as anyone else in this country. Rather, those opposed to the GZM have asked the proponents, among other things, to recognize and give way to the feelings of ordinary Americans that a mosque does not belong at Ground Zero.

4. Obama’s remarks alluded to the right of private property involved in the construction of the proposed GZM. We haven’t previously heard much about the right of private property from Obama.

5. Obama’s remarks emphasized the First Amendment rights of Muslims in America. Gone was the living Constitution and the vaunted “empathy” that may impel right (left) thinking judges to depart from a fixed reading of constitutional rights. Whatever empathy Obama expressed for the opponents of the GZM, it was an empathy that had to give way in recognition of the First Amendment right of free exercise. Now if Obama would just take the same approach to the First Amendment right of free speech at issue in Citizens United, for example, he might want to issue an apology to the Supreme Court.

6. It’s good for Muslims to build the GZM in New York, but not for Jews to build apartments in Jerusalem. Go figure.

7. In the remarks prefacing his formal speech, Obama recognized Rep. Andre Carson in the audience, who (along with Rep. Keith Ellison, whom he also called out) is one of the two Muslims in Congress. We are still awaiting the the enterprising journalist who can ferret out the branch of Islam that comports with the tenets of the Democratic Party on the equality of women, abortion, gay rights and all the rest.

8. By Saturday, in the face of the response his remarks engendered, Obama was backing off from his support for the GZM. He availed himself of the option of emphasizing the straw man he had addressed. We were to believe that he was only addressing the issue in the abstract. Both Friday’s statement and Saturday’s backtracking were remarkably unpersuasive.

9. Obama could have played a constructive role in resolving the deeply divisive issues raised by the GZM. Instead he chose to put on display his belief in his superior nature.

10. With great reliability Obama stands athwart the feelings of ordinary Americans. Indeed, he is a much more ardent defender of the faith of Musims than he is of the United States, of its history or of its people. Although Obama framed his GZM remarks as a citizen and President of the United States, he seems to think of himself less as a citizen of the United States than as a citizen of the world and less as president than as philosopher king.

In the 2008 campaign Obama presented himself as a healing if not a redemptive figure. For reasons that are almost completely understandable, many voters chose to believe in Obama’s self-presentation. Belief in Obama’s persona conflicted with voluminous evidence to the contrary that was there for anyone with eyes to see.

These voters who bought Obama nevertheless quickly saw through Obama’s persona after the election. They now believe they were sold a bill of goods, and they are of course right. Obama’s Iftar remarks suggest that Obama has no hesitation at all in reminding voters how he pulled one over on them.

also:

Not With A Bang

When the Democrats were trying to sell their “culture of corruption” theme, Exhibit A was Tom DeLay, the Republican House Majority Leader from 2003 to 2005. DeLay stepped down under a cloud, as he was indicted by a partisan Democrat in Travis County, Texas, and was under investigation by the Department of Justice in connection with the Abramoff case.

There was never any substantial evidence, however, that DeLay had done anything wrong, and the Texas prosecution, as we wrote repeatedly at the time, was a joke. Now the Justice Department has announced that it is no longer investigating DeLay. The exoneration, however, comes several years too late:
(more…)

by EternalVigilance

Aerial photo of World Trade Center Ground Zero following Sept. 11 attacks. Red square to right of Ground Zero marks former Burlington Coat Factory and proposed location of Cordoba House.

It should be mentioned that part of one of the hijacked planes went through the building in question. That makes it very much a part of Ground Zero.

Breaking:

Hamas agreed with Barack Obama this weekend- The Ground Zero Victory Mosque must be built.

The New York Post reported:

A leader of the Hamas terror group yesterday jumped into the emotional debate on the plan to construct a mosque near Ground Zero — insisting Muslims “have to build” it there.

“We have to build everywhere,” said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization’s chief on the Gaza Strip.

“In every area we have, [as] Muslim[s], we have to pray, and this mosque is the only site of prayer,” he said on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on WABC.

“We have to build the mosque, as you are allowed to build the church and Israelis are building their holy places.”

Hamas, he added, “is representing the vast majority of the Arabic and Islamic world — especially the Islamic side.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who so far has not taken a position on the mosque, dismissed the endorsement.

“Hamas is a terrorist organization, and their views don’t deserve any weight on anything,” his spokesman said.

Zahar said Muslims around the world, including those who live in this country, are united in a common cause.

Has anyone seen the Why Islam ? billboard on 95s. It asks viewers to go to this Site

Funny how the site does not spend too much time on honor killings.

or the Execution of Women in Afghanistan

Or mutilation
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