Remembrance

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) remember a selfless American hero at demagogue Rep. Peter King's (R-NY) unAmerican activities hearing:



Self-styled anti-terrorism crusader Peter King has been a terrorism supporter himself in the past -- he fully supported the IRA and denied they killed civilians.

Movingly Put, Mr. President

It doesn't get better than this, from today's POTUS press conference in response to a question from the Fox reporter:

"I think I've been pretty clear on my position here. And that is, is that this country stands for the proposition that all men and women are created equal, that they have certain inalienable rights; one of those inalienable rights is to practice their religion freely. And what that means is that if you could build a church on a site, you could build a synagogue on a site, if you could build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on the site...

"We are not at war against Islam. We are at war against terrorist organizations that have distorted Islam or falsely used the banner of Islam to engage in their destructive acts. And we've got to be clear about that. We've got to be clear about that because ... if we're going to successfully reduce the terrorist threat, then we need all the allies we can get. The folks who are most interested in a war between the United States or the West and Islam are al Qaeda. That's what they've been banking on.

"And fortunately, the overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world are peace-loving, are interested in the same things that you and I are interested in: how do I make sure I can get a good job, how can I make sure that my kids get a decent education, how can I make sure I'm safe, how can I improve my lot in life. And so they have rejected this violent ideology for the most part, overwhelmingly.

"And so from a national security interest, we want to be clear about who the enemy is here. It's a handful, a tiny minority of people who are engaging in horrific acts and have killed Muslims more than anybody else.

"The other reason it's important for us to remember that is because we've got millions of Muslim-Americans, our fellow citizens, in this country. They're going to school with our kids. They're our neighbors. They're our friends. They're our coworkers. And, you know, when we start acting as if their religion is somehow offensive, what are we saying to them?

"I've got Muslims who are fighting in Afghanistan, in the uniform of the United States armed services. They're out there putting their lives on the line for us, and we've got to make sure that we are crystal clear for our sakes and their sakes: They are Americans. And we honor their service. And part of honoring their service is making sure that they understand that we don't differentiate between 'them' and 'us.' It's just 'us.'"

Check out the passion and thoughtfulness for yourself:



Need I say, Gobama?

Wild Fires

When they start burning books in America, it's time to shun or, where applicable, arrest the book burners:

The government turned up the pressure Tuesday on the head of a small Florida church who plans to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, warning him that doing so could endanger U.S. troops and Americans everywhere.

But the Rev. Terry Jones insisted he would go ahead with his plans, despite criticism from the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, the White House and the State Department, as well as a host of religious leaders.

Jones, who is known for posting signs proclaiming that Islam is the devil's religion, says the Constitution gives him the right to publicly set fire to the book that Muslims consider the word of God.

These American Taliban Christianists endanger national security and our soldiers abroad in the name of their own PR and, no doubt, donations from the hateful faithful.

Gen. David Petraeus warned Tuesday in an e-mail to The Associated Press that "images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence." It was a rare example of a military commander taking a position on a domestic political matter.

And at a time when fire is costing people their homes in Boulder, even wilder in Detroit.

Credit for GOPers

Two Republicans have shown themselves to be true Americans in the best sense of the word -- tolerant, sensible, respectful of the Constitution. One is 9/11 widower and former Bush Administration Solicitor General, Ted Olson, who also recently co-led the case against the heinous Prop 8 here in California, coming out in favor of what President Obama said regarding the Cordoba House near Ground Zero:

The other, and it ain't easy for me to give credit here but it is richly deserved, is MSNBC's Former GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough, who is not only pounding on Newt Gingrich for that parasite's demagoguery on the issue, but also has Pat - yes - Buchanan chiming in with him against the current Republican Tea Party line on the site:

Bravo, gents. You've both earned kudos in my book, and I'll have to go a little easier on Joe the next time he says something I disagree with.

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.

War Stories

So the post-Ft. Hood violent backlash against Muslims begins...even when they're not:

TAMPA — Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.

That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.

What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist.

This on the same day that more Blackwater bad actions were revealed:

WASHINGTON — Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.

Cash is king!

And, today, our President delivered a moving eulogy for the victims of the Ft. Hood attack, mentioning each one by name and telling something about their lives.

And "Taps" is the saddest song.

Haywire

Nothing but tragedy at Ft. Hood. The shooter suspect is still alive and, as he's a Muslim, the leading American Islamic advocacy group has come out with a statement condemning (duh!) the senseless slaughter.

Looks like the teabaggers picked the wrong day to capture the news cycle.

Oh, and I'm in agreement with George F. Will (on something other than baseball).

The Brave One

I can't think of a more courageous politician in my lifetime than President Barack Obama. If the assassination of a doctor by a rightwing extremist goaded on by Bill O'Reilly and Operation Rescue wasn't warning enough, and this guy in Utah arrested for being on a mission to do ultimate harm to our President, there's the speech in Cairo today that speaks dangerous truths we've never heard before from an American President, truths that are common knowledge but that neocons would rather never be admitted to, Kabuki-style, truths that are not well-received by either al Qaida or the Israeli settler movement.

The whole hour:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

He called for all kinds of responsibility -- for Palestinians to accept Israel, for Israel to stop with the West Bank settlements, for corrupt regional governments to reform, for women to get equal education on the region, for understanding by America of the Muslim world and an end to stereotyping of American by Islamic peoples. Enough truth to offend a lot of partisans.

A sampling of those against it:

Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, John Bolton, Hugh Hewitt, the Republican Jewish Coalition, and John Boehner all disliked the President's speech.

Okay, with enemies like that, we know he's doing something right.

As Al Giordano points out, Obama is the Anti-Politician:

Politicians, in general, are a reactive caste. They look at things as they are, and opportunistically seek out and study the cracks and weaknesses in society in order to put themselves at its helm. Most believe (and those that don’t believe, pretend) they are doing this in service of a higher ideal: right or left, liberal or conservative, progressive or religious, whatever, but because the great majority of them are essentially reacting to the same set of seemingly inexorable current events, the sum of their actions is that of constructing individual fiefdoms that look much the same no matter what ideology or flag flies over them.

And then there are the rare historical figures that appear now and then in human events to disregard those base reactive impulses with enough discipline to first develop their own idea of how things ought to be. And only after developing a detailed yet clear vision for society do they then enter the political fray. Probably the best example in the last century of such an anti-politician was Mohandas K. Gandhi, who returned home to India at the age of 46, after winning civil rights for immigrants in South Africa. He found a homeland thirsting for independence from the British Empire and its impositions. A media hero and cause celébre upon his return to Indian shores, the pro-independence advocates and parties sought Gandhi out to lead a revolution against the Crown.

Gandhi – conscious that after being away for 27 years in London and South Africa he did not know his native country well enough to lead it – instead imposed upon himself a moratorium against speaking to the press, and embarked upon a listening tour through the forgotten and impoverished regions of India in order to first understand what the real yearnings and realities of its people were. Only after he felt he had a comprehensive enough vision for what kind of better society was possible there did he enter the fray that, as history knows, won independence for the region, while showing the world a new way to fight for freedom.

Listening to the President’s remarks in Cairo this morning – billed as a speech to all the Muslims in the world – it is clear that in Barack Obama our moment in history has one such transcendent leader.

Here's ten key points from this, the biggest speech of his already remarkable career. A President who can finally talk to Palestinians. Speaking to the U.S. from Cairo as well. The first President to acknowledge that America, in 1953, sabotaged democracy in Iran when fairly elected Prime Minister Mossadegh had the temerity to nationalize the oil industry), starting the chain of blowback that led to radical Islamic revolution, U.S. hostages, today's nuclear threat.

Here's how Netanyahu watched the speech, Kabuki reactions. Here's the overwhelmingly favorable reaction from the world press, including the mainstream Islamic press.

Michael Scherer has the clearest sense of Obama's overriding international vision, this "Obama Doctrine", and how it played out with the powerful close of the speech:

This vision, as I have touched on before, does not elevate the United States as the protector of transcendent values, but rather lowers America into the great pool of nations and peoples, where everyone operates on the same level with a God-given set of responsibilities to understand each other and work together for collective improvement. The political leader who has spent a lifetime moving between cultures envisions a world where tribal differences are trumped by common humanity and practical necessity. In some ways, it is as idealistic a vision as the ones proposed by Bush senior and junior. Time will tell if it is more successful.

It is notable that Obama ended his speech with three quotes, one from the Koran, one from the Talmud, one from the New Testament, each describing God's instructions for all people to work together and get along. Of the three, the quote from the Koran is the most eloquent. “O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.” It is, in a poetic verse, an apt encapsulation of Obama's radical idea--that despite our differences we are meant to find common purpose.

So can it be done? Well, Obama is saying to the world, look at me: the son of a Kenyan and a Kansan, the Christian man with a Muslim family, the black Hawaiian teenage stoner who rose through the traditionally white Northeastern Ivy League to lead the nation's most powerful country. I've already done it. You can too.

Yes we, the world, can.

But will we?

The Big One

I don't think it's going too far to say that the biggest reason Obama was elected was to repair our situation with the Muslim nations of the world, both diplomatically and militarily.

If there was no other reason to vote for this brilliant yet reasonable man starting back in the primaries when the economy wasn't the issue, it was because as someone with half his ancestry in that world and a few years logged living in an Islamic country as a child, he was going to present a different face to the world than ever in American history. Ever since the oil barons of this world fully exercised their power for the first time with gas shortages in the mid-1970's, simultaneously as Israeli-Palestinian violence reached unheard of levels, as the U.S. installed Shah fled revolutionary Iran and the religious militants took U.S. hostages, we've had to grapple with the region disproportionately more than in our nation's past. And none of it has been successful thus far.

Now you fix those problems, multi-culti college man.

As I've often written, Obama's greatest asset is his strategic capacities. If rescuing the U.S. banking and credit system wasn't difficult enough, there's all the moving parts in the Middle East. So I'm looking forward to his speech tomorrow. Of all his big speeches thus far, this is the biggest. This one is about forging a new course in World History.

Word is the speech is very candid. Which is his strategy for his whole Administration:

“We have a joke around the White House,” the president said. “We’re just going to keep on telling the truth until it stops working — and nowhere is truth-telling more important than the Middle East.”

I'll be concerned if it stops working.

So far from a Fox News branded apology tour, Obama is seeking to do the job we hired him to do:

CAIRO — President Obama arrived in Egypt on Thursday aiming to repair America’s relationship with the Muslim world through a speech at Cairo University, a carefully planned address that aides said would challenge Muslim perceptions about the United States.

He's had a good first news cycle over in that part of the world. If he's setting up partnerships within the region linked out to the Western world, then this will be the Islamic World equivalent of Nixon goes to China. The history train is taking a turn through what was once called The Orient.

Watch this space.

Ball of Confusion

We're in crazy times. Recessions, depressions do that. Howling at the moon. Firing guns. Stealing airplanes. Devastation in Italy, 150 dead so far in the earthquake.

Bob Dylan likening Barack Obama to a fictional character.

Meanwhile, our President rushes to change the world fast enough, overdue. Working quickly for a nuclear-free world. He's doing perhaps the #1 job he was hired for, the biggest unassailable point that no other candidate could claim, a man with Muslim family making it clear to the world that America is not in a battle against Islam.

Going so far as to say that America is not solely a Christian nation:



Oh, and he's reforming the U.S. military budget while allowing Americans to finally see (with the relatives' permission) the cost of war:



And it's the week that brought marriage equality to Iowa, the state that first showed us it was alright to vote for Obama. Can the state of America really be so bad when a straight legislator makes an honest, compassionate, breakthrough speech like this:



Yes, the battle against barbarism is far from over, but at least decency is scoring some points right now.

Good News

Have you -- or maybe one of your parents -- received one of those emails damning Barack Obama as a Muslim or closet Islamic terrorist setting up to destroy America from the inside?

Yep, all lies, urban legend already debunked, but designed to sow seeds of doubt in the bigoted voter, the 9/11-blinkered patriot, the Islam-averse Jewish voter.

But a lie, as Winston Churchill so famously intoned, "gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." Is there anything candidate Obama might do to once and for all expose this story to light?

How about a mini-scandal with his former (Christian) Minister:

Sen. Barack Obama's pastor says blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America."

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's south side, has a long history of what even Obama's campaign aides concede is "inflammatory rhetoric," including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism."

Leave aside the question of whether people whose ancestors were kidnapped from their homes and families forever first in their homeland and then under their domestic enslavement, over and over again should bless and curse the nation built on their torture, Obama's campaign started simply:

In a statement to ABCNews.com, Obama's press spokesman Bill Burton said, "Sen. Obama has said repeatedly that personal attacks such as this have no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they're offered from a platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church. Sen. Obama does not think of the pastor of his church in political terms. Like a member of his family, there are things he says with which Sen. Obama deeply disagrees. But now that he is retired, that doesn't detract from Sen. Obama's affection for Rev. Wright or his appreciation for the good works he has done."

But that wasn't enough and Obama knew it, so again with the blazing-fast response, tonight the campaign took three concrete steps to putting the pastor behind him.

First, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright stepped down from his "honorary membership on the campaign's African American Religious Leadership Committee."

Second, Obama blogs his detailed response on Huffington Post. He denounces and later in the same paragraph he rejects (witty touch), he provides context:

As I have written about in my books, I first joined Trinity United Church of Christ nearly twenty years ago. I knew Rev. Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago. He also led a diverse congregation that was and still is a pillar of the South Side and the entire city of Chicago. It's a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS.

Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he's been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn...

...Let me repeat what I've said earlier. All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country.

With Rev. Wright's retirement and the ascension of my new pastor, Rev. Otis Moss, III, Michelle and I look forward to continuing a relationship with a church that has done so much good. And while Rev. Wright's statements have pained and angered me, I believe that Americans will judge me not on the basis of what someone else said, but on the basis of who I am and what I believe in; on my values, judgment and experience to be President of the United States.

Third, he appears live on MSNBC:



While it's still too early to judge the entire net effect, Zacapoet suspects it a work of genius:

The false meme of being a Muslim was dragging Obama down in the polls so that his national lead over hillary was only 6-8%. But now that even Sean Hannity has recanted and is berating Obama for being a Christian, that drag should soon whither away.

My guess is the Obama camp was holding back on the Wright story until they could use it to jolt the psyche of the electorate regarding the phony Muslim accusations. The people who vote for Obama, the liberals, high-school or better voters, Independents, don't really care about what Obama's minister said, so long as he wasn't saying it from a church of Devil Worshipers.

As a Catholic who goes to the Lutheran Church because of the radically right-wing views of my Church, I fully understand why Obama is in the predicament he's in regarding Wright. People who participate in religions generally do so because of their links to the community. If you look at polls you see that religious conservatives don't vote for Obama anyway. People who are tolerant in their religious views, likely Obama voters, will generally tolerate the rants of Obama's former minister.

As The Field elucidates:

The bottom line: The more controversy around Obama’s Christian pastor, and his refusal to throw him under the bus, the less Obama will have to beat back the (more potentially destructive, ‘though false) Muslim smears in the fall. One might even say that the Wright controversy is, for Obama, a gift from a god that “speaks in mysterious ways.”

Once again, people are worrying too much about “what might offend others,” a signature of 1970s, 1980s and 1990s politics. But beyond the partisan feigners of outrage, or the “concern trolls” fretting aloud about how “others” could be turned off, who is really offended out there?

We’re in the 21st Century now, when a certain amount of crazy is expected from all religious leaders.

Amen to all that.