If they cannot win on the issues - and Republicans never could since lies do not count as solutions -Scaring White People for Fun and Profit
Rachel Maddow hits another one out of the park with the motivations behind those exploiting this trumped-up "ground zero mosque" debacle and this one sentence pretty well sums it up: "It`s time to scare white people for political profit."
RACHEL MADDOW: We begin tonight with what has past becoming the most embarrassing non-Justin Bieber related obsession of the summer of 2010. It is the proposed building of an Islamic community center in downtown New York City.
Now, this story, this talking point maybe, has quickly become a study in political awkwardness for many conservatives.
GLENN BECK, FOX NEWS HOST: The imam from the Ground Zero mosque apparently wants Sharia law in America.
The imam of the proposed Ground Zero mosque won`t even denounce Hamas as a terrorist organization.
Now, let me ask you this, would a moderate imam, a peaceful Muslim, employ another imam who told an Arabic language Web site that, quote, "Only the Jews could have perpetrated the 9/11 attack"?
MADDOW: Here`s what I mean about awkwardness with this story on the political right. That host that you just saw there in those clips, this guy here, Glenn Beck, before spending this summer in being against the imam and what Mr. Beck calls the Ground Zero mosque, before this became this summer`s scare story talking point, Mr. Beck himself appeared on TV with that very same imam. Not to envy against him but to join him in promoting a moderate vision of Islam.
Former Bush administration official Karen Hughes is having the same kind of awkwardness with her own record in this story. Ms. Hughes has now written a op-ed arguing that the planned cultural center in downtown New York City should be moved further away from the World Trade Center site, calling the plan to build there, especially contentious because, she says, quote, "it goes to the heart of who is to blame for the attacks of September 11th, 2001."
An Islamic community center goes to the heart of who is to blame for the attacks of September 11th? If that does not make any sense to you, rest assured it probably does not make any sense to Karen Hughes either, because Karen Hughes also knows the imam behind the proposed Islamic center she is arguing shouldn`t be built or should at least be moved. In fact, she worked with him on Muslim outreach during the Bush administration. They, in fact, traveled together, side by side, to promote a moderate vision of Islam.
We can only ask why these conservatives love terrorists and hate America.
What ever happened to hard work and an honest day's pay. Why are Republicans on the fascist path where wealth is rewarded and work is punished - Republicans are Ruining This Country With Their Extreme Need for Greed and Sloth.
I keep trying to find a liberal fair minded media and have found only right of center to far right genuflectors - Pundits Blame the Victims on Obama Muslim Myth
Other commentators have blamed Obama himself for failing to refute the myth. The Washington Examiner's Byron York, for instance, claimed (absurdly) that "Obama and his aides might also blame themselves for the way they've handled the Muslim issue over the years" such as saying that his father was a Muslim in 1985 and speaking about his family background during a speech in Cairo. Similarly, CNN's Candy Crowley and Time's Amy Sullivan both faulted Obama for not making more public visits to church. However, neither Ronald Reagan nor George W. Bush regularly attended church services (see here and here), and no one accused them of being Muslims.*
But while pundits have been quick to blame Obama and the public, very few commentators have noted the role played by the media and political elites in misleading the public about Obama's religious beliefs. Slate's Dave Weigel came the closest, writing that "At some point it became acceptable to question Obama's American-ness, which naturally begged the question of whether he was a secret Muslim... and the WorldNetDailys, tabloids, and Drudge Reports of the world were ready to keep begging that question."
It's worth examining the scope of this effort, which has been ongoing since Obama's presidential campaign. Here's a sample from a 2009 post:
Frank Gaffney, the right-wing apparatchik last seen suggesting that President Obama's apparent bow to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was "code" telling "our Muslim enemies that you are willing to submit to them," has written an entire column for the Washington Times arguing that "there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself" (via MM). He bases this false conclusion upon a bizarre and elaborate exegesis of Obama's Cairo speech that would embarrass even the most paranoid conspiracy theorist.
We've repeatedly seen members of the press and political figures promoting this myth (or claims that reinforce it) over the last few years. Just in the last week, Media Matters has documented Fox Nation falsely claiming "Obama Says U.S. Is a 'Muslim Country,'" Fox News running a graphic about Obama titled "Islam or Isn't He?", former Washington Times editor Wes Pruden writing that Obama found "his 'inner Muslim'" in Cairo, and Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb asking "if the president hasn't been concealing some greater fluency with the language of the Koran."
Gaffney later made the bizarre claim that the alleged resemblance of the Missile Defense Agency's new logo to the Islamic crescent and star proved that Obama was trying to submit the United States to sharia law (he subsequently retracted the claim).
