Debra Burlingame Slams Imam Rauf's Comments as 'Extortion'

She's a national treasure, and it's hard to find anyone who speaks with more clarity on the issues.

Questions for Imam Rauf

From M. Zuhdi Jasser, Founder and President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (and a physician and former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander), at Wall Street Journal:

As someone who has been involved in building mosques around the country, and who has dealt with his fair share of unjustified opposition, I ask of Imam Rauf and all his supporters, "Where is your sense of fairness and common decency?" In relation to Ground Zero, I am an American first, a Muslim second, just as I would be at Concord, Gettysburg, Normandy Beach, Pearl Harbor or any other battlefield where my fellow countrymen lost their lives.

I must ask Imam Rauf: For what do you stand—what's best for Americans overall, or for what you think is best for Islam? What have you said and argued to Muslim-majority nations to address their need for reform? You have said that Islam does not need reform, despite the stoning of women in Muslim countries, death sentences for apostates, and oppression of reformist Muslims and non-Muslims.

You now lecture Americans that WTC mosque protests are "politically motivated" and "go against the American principle of church and state." Yet you ignore the wide global prevalence of far more dangerous theo-political groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and all of its violent and nonviolent offshoots ....

As an American Muslim, I look at that pit of devastation and contemplate the thousands of lives undone there within seconds. I pray for the ongoing strength to fight the fanatics who did this, and who continue their war against my country with both overt violence and covert strategies that aim to undo the very freedoms for which so many have fought and died.

Imam Rauf may not appear to the untrained eye to be an Islamist, but by making Ground Zero an Islamic rather than an American issue, and by failing to firmly condemn terrorist groups like Hamas, he shows his true allegiance.

Islamists in "moderate" disguise are still Islamists. In their own more subtle ways, the WTC mosque organizers end up serving the same aims of the separatist and supremacist wings of political Islam. In this epic struggle of the 21st century, we cannot afford to ignore the continuum between nonviolent political Islam and the militancy it ultimately fuels among the jihadists.

RTWT.

RELATED: At New York Times, "Video and Latest Updates on Koran Burning Cancellation," and AP, "Pastor Cancels Quran-Burning, Then Reconsiders" (via Memeorandum).

Pastor Terry Jones Cancels Koran Burning

At ABC News, "Pastor Terry Jones Calls off Koran Burning, But Deal for Ground Zero Mosque Is Denied: Defense Secretary Gates Calls Pastor in Appeal to Cancel Koran Burning."

Also, from AP, "Fla. Imam: No deal to Move NYC Mosque" (and at ABC News San Francisco and Memeorandum).

And from Pamela, "BREAKING NEWS: Church cancels burning of Qurans on 9/11 in a Deal to Move Ground Zero Mosque."

Anti-Semitic Education in the Muslim World

From Middle East Media Research Institute:

Obama's Problem Isn't That He's Been Too Moderate

From Jay Cost, at Weekly Standard, "Obama Tries to Rally the Base":

The President's attempts at bipartisanship typically ranged from half-hearted to specious, and his policies were never centrist. Centrists in the 111th Congress - of both parties - typically voted against the President's agenda. Of course, if you're on the left-hand side of the country, at, for instance, the New Republic or the American Prospect, the President did look awfully centrist. But from the perspective of middle America, he did not. Still, as wrong as this view is, I think the White House, like a lot of liberals, genuinely believes that the President tried earnestly to extend the hand of friendship, but had it bitten. The fact that it thinks it genuinely tried just goes to show that it - and, for that matter, much of the liberal intelligentsia - totally misunderstands American conservatism and the Republican party. That's ironic because the Tea Parties have a distinctly Jeffersonian Republican flair to them, and the DNC touts Thomas Jefferson as the party's founder.

Regardless, the President is facing a situation in which the opinions of Republicans and Independents are essentially set, and have been set for a while. Republicans have been long gone, obviously. But so are Independents. Gallup has had the President's job approval with Independents under 45% for almost four months. There is nothing the White House can do between now and the election to bring them back. Not with Recovery Summer turning into Recovery Sputter.

So what is left for the White House? Rally the base.

That is going to be the strategy coming from the West Wing for the next two months. That's why the President was never going to listen to moderates in his own party about the Bush tax cuts. It's why he is going to union meetings to talk about...sigh...more infrastructure spending. It's why he's talking about how his opponents treat him like a dog. Expect more stuff like this. He'll call out Fox News and Glenn Beck. For the next two months, the message from the White House is going to be like Ponderosa for the left: all you can eat red meat.

That's all the White House has left. Their hope - faint as it is - is to cede Independents, but amp up the Democratic base so the party does not get swamped by Republicans voting 90-10 against the Democrats.

My sense is that even if the White House manages to amp up its base, it is still going to lose the House. Take the basic Gallup numbers, recalibrate them for the 2006 turnout, and you still see a GOP win of +4 or thereabouts. Even with the (totally unrealistic for this year) 2008 numbers, you see a tie in the House vote, which I think would tilt the House to the GOP, thanks to the Democratic vote being concentrated in heavily Democratic districts. The White House is concerned that, if the turnout models continue the way they are, the final vote in November will be in line with Rasmussen and ABC News/WaPo, something like +13.

In other words, the White House, at this point, might be happy to walk away with a 1994-style loss. The worry is something closer to 1946 or 1894, when the Democrats struggled to get 45% of the vote.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Imam Rauf on Larry King Live — UPDATED!!

Imam Rauf claims that he has "a responsibility" to build the mosque, otherwise radical Islamists around the world will threaten "national security." In other words, screw the sensitivity concerns of Americans, you'll be blown to bits if you don't back off from my Victory Mosque. See Atlas Shrugs, "Ground Zero Supremacist Imam Rauf Threatens America: 'anger will explode in the Muslim world,' This crisis ...'could become something very dangerous indeed' 'Worse than Danish Cartoon Jihad," GZM is a 'national security issue'."

Also, don't miss Claudia Rosett for added context, at Pajamas Media, "Ground Zero Mosque: The Bombast of Imam Feisal."

The full interview is at YouTube.

UPDATE: From Larry O'Connor (via Memeorandum):

The man who continues to talk about healing and building bridges has thrown down the gauntlet. He created this entire situation by demanding that his mega-mosque be built in this exact location, despite the legitimate concerns of families of lost heroes whom he claims to care about. And now that the opposition of this mosque has fully engaged and has successfully swayed a vast majority of Americans to their side, he tells an international audience that if his plans don't go forward, America's national security will be at risk.

It could be that the Imam's threats, delivered in calm even tones, might end up doing more for the case against his mosque than any rally in the streets could ever do. And given Mr. Rauf's knowledge of the irrational and violent nature of the most radical practitioners of his faith, one has to challenge his judgement in even proposing this project in the first place.

There's a great comment thread at Protein Wisdom as well.

Even America's Liberal Elites Concede That Obama's Presidency is Crumbling

From Nile Gardiner, at London's Telegraph (via Theo Spark):

Democrats in Congress are no longer asking themselves whether this is going to be a bad election year for them and their party. They are asking whether it is going to be a disaster. The GOP pushed deep into Democratic-held territory over the summer, to the point where the party is well within range of picking up the 39 seats it would need to take control of the House. Overall, as many as 80 House seats could be at risk, and fewer than a dozen of these are held by Republicans.

Political handicappers now say it is conceivable that the Republicans could also win the 10 seats they need to take back the Senate. Not since 1930 has the House changed hands without the Senate following suit.

Is this a piece from National Review, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal or Fox News.com, all major conservative news outlets in the United States? No. It’s a direct quote from yesterday’s Washington Post, usually viewed by conservatives as a flagship of the liberal establishment inside the Beltway. The fact The Post is reporting that not only could Republicans sweep the House of Representatives this November, but may even take the Senate as well, is a reflection of just how far the mainstream, overwhelmingly left-of-centre US media has moved in the last month towards acknowledging the scale of the crisis facing the White House.

More at the link.

Sarah Palin Asks Pastor Jones to 'Stand Down' on Koran Burning Event

On Facebook (via Memeorandum):

Book burning is antithetical to American ideals. People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation – much like building a mosque at Ground Zero.

I would hope that Pastor Terry Jones and his supporters will consider the ramifications of their planned book-burning event. It will feed the fire of caustic rhetoric and appear as nothing more than mean-spirited religious intolerance. Don’t feed that fire. If your ultimate point is to prove that the Christian teachings of mercy, justice, freedom, and equality provide the foundation on which our country stands, then your tactic to prove this point is totally counter-productive.

Proof Democrats Heading for Major Losses in November

From Sean Hannity's:

Rage Against the ‘Breeders'

This is pretty unreal, from Jonathan Last, at Weekly Standard:

Like a puckish uncle determined to cause trouble at Thanksgiving dinner, the Washington Post periodically homes in on the existential conflicts that divide its readership. Earlier this summer, the Post Metro section headlined such a story “With City’s Baby Boom, Parental Guidance Suggested.” The article opened in Capitol Hill’s Lincoln Park, where a sudden outpouring of babies has caused altercations between parents, who bring their children, and childless adults, who bring their dogs, to play in the park.

The Lincoln Park neighborhood is gentrified and expensive—the median price for a rowhouse is in the $900,000s—and the dog owners there are annoyed at having to share space with human dependents. In an attempt to bring peace, a local pet coach who calls herself the Doggy Lama has been holding “dog citizen” workshops to help pet owners learn to deal peaceably with the interlopers. But it’s tough sledding. One dog owner interviewed by the Post said that she wished the kids could be confined to a fenced-in area of the park. “I find people with children to be tyrants,” she explained. “As someone who doesn’t have children, I think children are fine. I don’t think they own everything.”

The Post story detailed similar scuffles in other trendy Washington neighborhoods and generated 479 comments on the paper’s website before commenting was finally shut down. Readers ran about 60-to-40 against parents and children. Some sample entries:

CAC2: keep your nasty little snotty kid away from me, PLEASE!!!! Do not let your stickly offspring rush up to me in Whole Foods and grab my $250 Ralph Lauren silk skirt with it’s grubby, crusty hands. One of the benefits of not having children is not having to wear the Mommy Wardrobe. Do not make those of us who are not forced into wash and wear to pay extra for the dry cleaner to remove child goo. Do not allow your offspring to lean over the seat of a restaurant and try to initiate “conversation” with me when I am enjoying a meal with friends

graylandgal: I won’t make any apologies: I hate kids, especially babies. If parents can’t afford or locate a sitter, then stay home. I am bloody sick of having my feet and Achilles tendon rammed by knobby-tired strollers the size of Smart Cars; I am bitter about extortion for baby showers, christening gift, etc., for droolers who won’t thank me now any more than they will when graduation extortions start; I am nauseated by the stench of dirty diapers changed in public areas because a lazy-ass parent won’t adjourn to a restroom I am tired of “friends” dragging their hyper-active germ-spreaders to my antiques- and breakable-filled home for events clearly meant for grown-ups because, gee, everybody thinks they’re SO cute; and I weary of replying “hi” 467 times to a toddler who hangs over the back of an adjoining restaurant booth because the parents won’t make it sit down and shut up. Bitter? You bet. .  .  . My parents did not inflict me on society until I developed continence, self-ambulation, and social skills.

Knowingly or not, the Post had wandered headlong into a movement that has become increasingly militant in recent years: the childfree.

The term refers to adults—many of them married or cohabiting couples—without children. These people differ from the merely “childless” in that they want the world to know that their situation is not an accident. A spinster or an infertile couple might be childless by bad luck. The childfree are childless by choice.

As you already suspect, the childfree movement has its roots in the 1970s. After Paul Ehrlich’s (now discredited) Population Bomb became a sensation predicting hundreds of millions of deaths as the planet convulsed from overpopulation, clubs such as the National Organization for Non-Parents and No Kidding! sprang up. But what was once a hippy-crank affectation has in recent years become a wide-ranging attack on the societal machinery which supports and encourages baby-making.

More at the link.

Victoria Azarenka

I'm just now hearing about her, c/o Theo Spark:

Illegal Immigration's Impact on Our Public Schools

With Brandi Milloy of PJTV:

Nazi Tea Partiers

Right.

And haven't we heard this song before? Via POWIP:

Why Do Leftists Side With Islam Over Christianity?

The short answer is that both leftists and Islamists hate America and the West. But I'll let Sharon take it from there:

RELATED: At The Liberal Heretic, "“Burn a Quran Day”- Why Americans Need to Take the High Road."

Recovery Summer Bummer

Via Midnight Blue, "Recovery Starts November 2nd."

And I still just love the "Recovery Summer Bummer" rhyme, from Yid With Lid.

Daily Kos Anti-Semitism, And Then Some...

This is timeley, especially since I just reviewed American Taliban.

At Yid With Lid, "Anti-Jewish Hatred From the Folks Who Call the Tea Party Racist."

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs published a report which examines Anti-Semitic cartoon content used in some of the major progressive sites, such as Mondoweiss, The Daily Kos and Indymedia. Some of the content of these blogs pointed out in this report is short of startling. The sites use "political cartoons: to reinforce negative stereotypes against Jews. The cartoons cloak their Antisemitism in a veil "anti-Israelism."

This is not in any way to suggest that all anti-Israel expressions are anti-Semitic, but it is clear that these cartoons have crossed the line. The cartoons show Jews or Israelis as being Nazis trying to paint Jews as the ultimate evil and at the same time diminishing the evil of the Holocaust. Other illustrations try to perpetuate the anti-Semitic canard that Jews control the world, or the blood libel about Jews using Gentile children to satisfy some imagined blood-lust.

This is totally common on the left. I document this stuff all the time.

At the screencaps, the first post has been taken down: "Zionism was and remains a racist ideology." The second I've covered many times, and it remains fully published at Daily Kos, "Eulogy before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel."

See the report as well: "Anti-Semitic Cartoons on Progressive Blogs." And don't forget to add Booman Tribune to the list.

Appeals Court Sides With Bush Obama Administration on Seizure of Terror Suspects

I had to catch myself for a second. Sides with the Obama administration on terrorist rendition?

The ruling is on "extraordinary rendition," of course. The policy for which leftists wanted Bush administration war crimes trials. And now we've got Barack Obama in power continuing the policy. Hey, way to "regain America's moral stature in the world"!

Okay, but according to the New York Times:

A sharply divided federal appeals court on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit involving the Central Intelligence Agency’s practice of seizing terrorism suspects and transferring them to other countries for imprisonment and interrogation. The ruling handed a major victory to the Obama administration in its effort to advance a sweeping view of executive secrecy power.

Sweeping view of executive power? How many millions of words were written by leftists attacking proponents of that? Indeed, folks like John Yoo still can't get a break. And there's more:

The decision bolstered an array of ways in which the Obama administration has pressed forward with broad counter-terrorism policies after taking over from the Bush team, a degree of continuity that has departed from the expectations fostered by President Obama’s campaign rhetoric, which was often sharply critical of President Bush’s approach.

Among other policies, the Obama team has also placed a United States citizen on a targeted-killings list without a trial, blocked efforts by detainees in Afghanistan to bring habeas-corpus lawsuits challenging their indefinite imprisonment, and continued the C.I.A. rendition program – though the administration says it now takes greater safeguards to prevent detainees from being mistreated.

Okay, but I thought Obama once said of the Bush administration:

"Our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions," he said.

"In other words, we went off course."

Right.

He means our previous government, of course, even though he's now following the exact same policies. The ACLU is criticizing the wrong government as well, the one before the Obama administration:

Ben Wizner, a senior A.C.L.U. lawyer who argued the case before the appeals court, said the organization was deeply disappointed in the ruling.

“To this date, not a single victim of the Bush administration’s torture program has had his day in court,” Mr. Wizner said. “That makes this a sad day not only for the torture survivors who are seeking justice in this case, but for all Americans who care about the rule of law and our nation’s reputation in the world. If this decision stands, the United States will have closed it courts to torture victims while providing complete immunity to their torturers.”

Let's just chalk this up as one more reason why folks miss George W. Bush. Honesty. Integrity. Moral clarity. Yep, those are the things we had in the presidency before this administration. They were the right qualities --- and the right policies --- at the time. The courts think so, even if the neo-communists don't.

This Is Where We Begin to Say No

From Andrew McCarthy, at National Review (via Memeorandum):

For the better part of two decades, Americans have been murdered by Islamists and then lectured that they are to blame for what has befallen them. We have been instructed in the need for special sensitivity to the unceasing demands of Islamic culture and falsely accused of intolerance by the people who wrote the book on intolerance. Americans have sacrificed blood and bottomless treasure for Islamic peoples who despise Americans — and despise us even more as our sacrifices and gestures of self-loathing intensify. Americans have watched as apologists for terrorists and sharia were made the face of an American Muslim community that we were simultaneously assured was the very picture of pro-American moderation.

Americans have had our fill. We are willing to live many lies. This one, though, strikes too close to home, arousing our heretofore dormant sense of decency. Americans have now heard Barack Obama’s shtick enough times to know that when he talks about “our values,” he’s really talking about his values, which most of us don’t share. And after ten years of CAIR’s tired tirades, we’re immune to Feisal Rauf, too.

We look around us and we see our country unrivaled by anything in the history of human tolerance. We see thousands of thriving mosques, permitted to operate freely even though we know for a fact that mosques have been used against us, repeatedly, to urge terrorism, recruit terrorists, raise money for terrorists, store and transfer firearms, and inflame Muslims against America and the West. As Islamists rage against us, we see Islam celebrated in official Washington. As we reach out for the umpty-umpth time, we find Muslim leaders taking what we offer, but always with complaint and never with reciprocation. We’re weary, and we don’t really care if that means that Time magazine, Michael Bloomberg, Katie Couric, Fareed Zakaria, and the rest think we’re bad people — they think we’re bad people, anyway

RTWT.

Also, the typically lame leftist response at Blue Texan's Crib:

Nearly nine years after Wingnut Christmas, it's equal parts scary and satisfying to see conservatives admits what we suspected all along - they're a legion of racist bedwetters for whom there was never a distinction between invading Iraq/Afghanistan and simply killing Muslims - even though Bush said otherwise.

Bedwet this, you freaking creep:

Behead This, Markos

I tweeted Markos Moulitsas yesteday, with the link to my review of his book: "Misunderstanding Markos Moulitsas and American Taliban." He's a netroots bigshot, of course, so he's ignoring me. Fine. I'll tweet him again a little later. He can "behead this," as far as I'm concerned. (The reference is to the Ring of Fire interview Saturday where Moulitsas claims conservatives want to behead opponents.) The Dems-Daily Kos nexus is up for an electoral blowout of world historical importance on November 2nd. We're going to so thoroughly crush Kos and his neo-communist allies that "demoralized" won't begin to explain the scale of evisceration. Game on, asshole. Yeah, politics is dirty business, but somebody's got to do it. So screw you, commie pig.

The Debate Over Religious 'Intolerance'

I've placed "intolerance" in quotation marks. And that's because poll after poll has found that Americans are not intolerant toward Muslims. The Koran burnings are sponsored by the Westboro Baptists, the same folks who protest military funerals. They don't speak for me, and I can't think of any mainstream conservative that aligns with them. What's happening, as always, it the controversial actions of the few become fodder for attacks on the legitimate opposition of the many. This is SOP with the radical left and their allied MFM contingents. It's messed up, but that's the kind of information stream we're dealing with these days. The New York Times is on the case, by the way. See, "Concern Is Voiced Over Religious Intolerance." And as usual, as Tom Maguire points out, the reporters buried the lede:

They did not take a stand on whether to support the proposed mosque and community center near ground zero in Manhattan, saying, “Persons of conscience have taken different positions on the wisdom of the location of this project, even if the legal right to build on the site appears to be unassailable.”