Wrong on So Many Levels...

There is so much wrong with this picture (stolen from Tammy Bruce) and this article that I just don't know where to start.  Tammy covered the picture pretty well, and yes, there are a lot of cracks to be made about the umbrella situation here, but what jumped to my mind was "What in the hell is she wearing?"  Why, oh why, does our first lady feel such a penchant for dressing in patterned flour sacks?  I know.  It's petty to criticize Michelle's tacky wardrobe (which gets tackier as time goes on, if you've noticed), but I do long for some class and dignity from that quarter.

This Politico piece is something else altogether.  It just shows, once again, what a thin-skinned whiner this president is.  When Brian Williams asked Obama about the recent poll regarding Obama's faith, Obama's response was

“I can’t spend all of my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead,” quipped Obama, who took a deep breath to gather his thoughts when asked if the poll reflected his inability to communicate with voters.

“The facts are the facts. We went through some of this during the campaign — there is a mechanism, a network of misinformation that in a new media era can get churned out there constantly,” said a visibly annoyed Obama, referring to “birthers,” who have waged a guerrilla campaign questioning either the existence or the validity of his Hawaiian birth certificate.

Did he really answer the question?  Williams asked about his faith, not his birth certificate.  And I don't think anybody asked him to plaster it on his forehead, but if he's volunteering....  Personally, I don't give a damn about either at this point, but it does seem that he sidestepped the question a little.  The birther question isn't necessarily the same as the Mulsim question.

But, that's beside the point.  

He was miffed at a question regarding the BP spill response as well, saying it's nothing at all like Katrina.  Did you notice that while he was boasting on his rapid response and quick efficiency in capping the spill in his Xavier speech yesterday, and while promising to stay with New Orleans until she's "all the way back," he had nothing to say about the moratorium.  Nothing.  Nada.  

He was also a bit miffed when Williams asked him to clarify his position on the mosque, proving again that he's missing the point upon which Americans are so angry with regard to this issue:

“I didn’t walk it back it all,” he said. “I was very specific with my team… The core value and principle that every American is treated the same doesn’t change… At [a White House Ramadan celebration], I had Muslim Americans who had been in uniform fighting in Iraq… How can you say to them that their religious faith is less worthy of respect?... That’s something that I feel very strongly about.”

Nobody is arguing the right to build a mosque or asserting that their religious faith isn't worthy of respect.  We're protesting the decision (as opposed to "right") to build it right there.  

I'd have expected him to be a little less petulant and defensive after a lovely vacation at the Vineyard....well rested and all that.  But there he was, nonetheless, in his typical defensive mode.  

Tiresome.

(More at Memeorandum)

Thumbs Down

The New York Times reports on the Glenn Beck rally this morning, suggesting it is "a thumb in the eye" of civil rights leaders that Beck's rally is on the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech and will be held from the very place that speech was delivered.

Remarkably, the Times does NOT, however, see the Ground Zero Mosque project as a "thumb in the eye" of the families and survivors of 9/11.

Here's a thumbs down to the NYT.

Update:  Here's the live stream of the Beck rally.  LOTS of folks there!

Oh August, Please Go

Man...it's August; I'm distracted and unfocused.

Well, I'm really focused on work right now and getting the school year off to a good start.  There are a lot of little details, procedures, and paperwork that need to be handled.  That's consuming a lot of my energy right now.  It'll level off, soon.

I just can't write about this mosque anymore.  It's such a cut and dry issue to me, I just can't continue writing about how morally wrong it is for this mosque to happen.  Bride of Rove nailed it for me today on this issue:

Ground Zero Victory Mosque? I’m against it. Had they named it anything but the Cordoba Project and insisted on dedicating it on 9-11 and if they had more than $17k in the bank with the funding coming from mystery money and had Atlas Shrugs not uncovered the truth about the Imam in charge – meh – maybe. But given all that? Who the hell out there can support it other than on the lame-assed “It’s legal” defense? It’s offensive and aweful and should be shut down before the first brick is touched

Read what she wrote and know my response is "what she said!"

I'm also really interested in this post by Chris Harnisch regarding Yemen, but alas, I'm unfocused.  I can't force my grey matter to delve deeply enough into it to matter right now.

You know, I had an email conversation with a friend this weekend about blogging; how do you keep going when it all just gets silly and redundant and you get to the point where you can't even make it relevant anymore.  I finally decided, it's just August.  It'll come back around.

Right now what I'm really focused on is my Stieg Larsson series.  I read the first book, as you know.  Then I read the second one and when I finished it Sunday night I was all, "What the HELL!  How can he leave me like this!"  Thank goodness I'm reading them so far behind everyone else because now I have all three.  If I'd had to wait several months before getting my hands on book number three, I'd be furious!  He SOOOOOOO left me hanging.  Tsk, tsk.

So I'm just beginning book three, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, and...well, I'm focused on THAT.  I can't wait to find out what happens to Lisbeth Salander.  (Please don't tell me!).  As I finish them I pass them off to my brother; he's equally enthralled.

But, you know, if I was focused enough to blog about something it might be this post from Hot Air about Charlie Crist's sinking fortunes.  Heh!

Or I'd especially like to cover this one about the moratorium.  Via The Wall Street Journal,:

Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn't trust the industry's safety equipment and the government's own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents.

Oh man.  That one's gonna hurt...; Michelle Malkin weighed in on this one, here.

And consider this, although at this point, it's just rumor because I haven't confirmed it in great detail, but according to a source, he told me his firm has been "rehiring" workers that were "laid off" some sixty days ago because for each "new hire" there is a $5000 tax credit under Obama's jobs program.

WTF?  Can you do that?  PolitiFact says:

With his first year in office under his belt and unemployment still high, President Barack Obama called for additional help for the economy through a tax credit for businesses that add jobs...The tax credit would be $5,000 for every new worker employed in 2010. It would be capped at $500,000 per firm.

Hmph.  No potential for fraud there, no?  

I don't think I WANT to focus on the possibilities there...

Meanwhile, Obama's index is -14 today as he chips away on the greens on Martha's Vineyard and the rest of us squabble over jobs and mosques and the country goes to hell in a handbasket. 

Ah, August.

Please go away.

The Liberal Left Misses Dubya, Too

Oh this is just too gleefully rich for me:

There's a new argument emerging among supporters of the Ground Zero mosque. Distressed by President Obama's waffling on the issue, they're calling on former President George W. Bush to announce his support for the project, because in this case Bush understands better than Obama the connection between the war on terror and the larger question of America's relationship with Islam. It's an extraordinary change of position for commentators who long argued that Bush had done grievous harm to America's image in the Muslim world and that Obama represented a fresh start for the United States.

Oh you are just kidding me!  Seriously?  We've got the likes of Maureen Dowd pining for Dubya?

The war against the terrorists is not a war against Islam. In fact, you can’t have an effective war against the terrorists if it is a war on Islam. George W. Bush understood this. And it is odd to see Barack Obama less clear about this matter than his predecessor. It’s time for W. to weigh in. 

Incredible.

Ed Morrissey has the rest:

That, of course, is one of the delicious ironies of this situation.  Obama has done nothing but attack and demonize Bush for the last nineteen months, mainly to distract attention from Obama’s own failures on the economy.  In fact, while Dowd et al demand a response from Bush, Obama is busy on the campaign trail (an activity that Obama chided the GOP for doing while Obama attended big fundraisers) attempting to continue blaming Bush for the economic slide Obama promised to prevent with his massive spending.

Heh!  And Doug Powers has a wonderful line here:

Are they asking the same George W. Bush who started an illegal and immoral war, lied about WMDs so his buddies could profit from the invasion and tortured exclusively Muslim detainees to come to the rescue of a president who was supposed to save America from all the horror Bush hath wrought? That’s fine, I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.

Yes, I appears most of us are on the same page.

And let me reiterate what most poeple already recognize; this isn't about building a mosque.  It's about building a mosque right there.  That point is even more evident when you know that Gov. David Paterson offered to meet with developers in order to help them find a new site and they refused.  In fact, developer Sharif El-Gamal said the planned mosque is "nowhere near the World Trade Center site."  Yeah, well, we know that's not true.  We know, too, that wreckage from the attack crashed through the Burlington Coat Factory building which is to be the site of this mosque.  Pretty near, if you ask me.

And now the liberal left who support the building of this mosque on the ashes of the World Trade Center want George W. Bush to weigh in.  They assume he will support the plan; he might and he might not.

Be careful what you wish for.

Shocker: Obama Backtracks on Mosque Statement

Obama's position on the Ground Zero mosque has been the dominant topic on Memeorandum for days; and of course, now he's pulling back on his statement.  I think Byron York handled this one best when he pointed out that Obama is very well aware of the fact that he says one thing and means another:

Now, there is simply no doubt that Obama's Friday evening speech, in the context in which it was delivered, was an endorsement of the Ground Zero project. It was certainly widely understood as such...But on Saturday, Obama said all those listeners were wrong, that they misunderstood him.

That's the whole thing...context.  Of course he wanted his iftar guests to conclude he supported the mosque.  Why else issue such a statement at such a time and place? 

But now, he has the luxury of saying, "Wait!  Wait!  You misunderstood me," to everyone else. 

Bullshit.

Of course the Imam has a legal right to build there.  Once again, that's not the issue.  The issue is the sensitivity of it.  I forget who said it but someone on television made a comparison to Pearl Harbor; nobody would consider building a monument to kamikaze pilots at Pearl Harbor.  It's not so very different.

Drudge isn't shy about heading into this one:

And, now, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Obama's buddy, Charlie Crist, has come out in support of Obama's statement.  You've got to just love this one.  Crist, who was just nearly tanked by the photograph of him and Obama as he supported the stimulus, now comes out in support of the mosque:

"I think he's right - yeah," Crist, who was elected governor as a Republican but is now running for Senate as an independent candidate, told CNN. "We are a country in my view that stands for freedom of religion. You know, respect for others. I know there are sensitivities and I understand that, but I think Mayor Bloomberg is right and I think the President is right."

What a buffoon.

And on the same day we learn that Rubio has passed Crist in the polls.  This one is still very tight, but Crist is doing himself no favors here.  Keep on talkin', Charlie.  Keep on talking. Maybe you'd like to go take a dip in the Atlantic with the Obamas while they're on yet another vacation, this time in your state. 

It'll be good times watching Gibbs spin all this tomorrow.  Can't wait.

Following the Imam to the Middle East

This is a story that bears watching over the next few weeks:  our State Department (read:  tax dollars) plans to send Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Imam planning the Ground Zero Mosque, on an outreach trip to the Middle East. 

The Weekly Standard's John McCormack has the money quote:

If the purpose of the junket is to "help people overseas understand our society"--and not to help Rauf raise the $100 million for his mosque--wouldn't it make sense to send someone representative of the vast majority of Americans who oppose the Ground Zero mosque? Perhaps the State Department could send someone--maybe Juan Williams or Rich Lowry or Abe Foxman or Bill McGurn or David Harsanyi or Neda Bolourchi or Sarah Palin or Rod Dreher or Christopher Caldwell or Bill Kristol--to explain to the people of the world that Americans aren't bigots but simply find it offensive and insensitive to build a mosque two blocks from the site of a horrific Islamist terrorist attack? 

And then McCormack suggests that Greg Gutfeld might be the perfect guy to do this.  Gutfeld, as you know, has suggested building a gay bar next to the mosque since we're all concerned about sensibilities and such.

And in a related story, Andy McCarthy reports that human remains are still being found at Ground Zero:

In late June, CBS — in a barely noticed story that is no longer available on its website — reported that 72 sets of human remains had just been recovered and identified as a result of new construction work at the Ground Zero site.

And we're ready to build a mosque there?  Seriously?

I'm not sure what kind of "outreach" this Imam is really headed to the Middle East to do, but I hope it's to point out that sensibilities run both ways and NOT to raise money for a mosque at Ground Zero that runs against the wishes of most Americans who will NEVER FORGET.