Balls of Clay

The whole Cordoba House debate is designed to take your mind off of actual needs of the American people. It's kind of a stupid strategy on the part of the GOP since the economy is not recovering quickly enough, and if they had a real plan besides continuing the ruinous Bush tax cuts favoring the rich at the expense of the deficit, they'd be primed for traction on that. But since they have no plan, they'd rather distract from the actions that have been taken by serious-minded Democrats (agree with them or not).

So you have moronic ex-Governor Tim Pawlenty trying to negate his wussy personality by coming down hard on the Imam of Cordoba House and the government for using him n outreach to better U.S. relations with Muslims around the world. However, that began with his lecture to the FBI under the Bush Administration, so Tim is essentially slamming his own. Not that it matters in his Fox-ruled world. (And, ironically enough, Fox is actually partly owned by a Saudi prince who's family rules by the very Sharia Law it enjoys fanning fears of coming to the U.S.)

Can we all just call it what it is, a political football?:

Richard Hanna, the Republican congressional candidate in NY-24, was the rare Republican who supported the proposed Cordoba House plans. That is, until his Democratic opponent, incumbent Rep. Michael Arcuri, announced his own opposition to the "Ground Zero mosque."

Now, Hanna says that "building a mosque near Ground Zero is insensitive."

Maybe the most shameful such political tool since 9/11 was used by Bush/Cheney to sell the Iraq War to America? Even a politician not taking a side manages to use it for political points:

Politico reports that (New Jersey Gov. Chris) Christie (R) was speaking at a bill-singing in Trenton, and said "I understand acutely the pain and sorrow and upset of the family members who lost loved ones that day at the hands of radical Muslim extremists," but "it would be wrong to so overreact to that, that we paint Islam with a brush of radical Muslim extremists that just want to kill Americans because we are Americans."

He added that "what offends me the most about all this, is that it's being used as a political football by both parties."

"I don't believe that it would be responsible of me to get involved and comment on this any further because it just put me in the same political arena as all of them," Christie said.

But I reserve special contempt for the ex-President who has revealed his balls of clay today in the simplest terms possible (via TPM):

As the "mosque" debate boiled over this weekend the big question was whether George W. Bush was going to weigh in.

TPM asked, and the response from his spokesman today was simple:

"President Bush has no comment."

In addition:

Assistants for Karen Hughes and Condoleezza Rice declined to comment.

There you have it.

Statesmanship.