ThinkFast: August 31, 2010
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on September 1st, 2010 4:37 am by HL
In a speech from the Oval Office tonight, President Obama will formally end the seven-year combat mission in Iraq that left 4,400 U.S. troops dead and thousands more wounded. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama will be careful not to declare victory: “Obviously tomorrow marks a change in our mission. It marks a milestone that we have achieved in removing our combat troops,” Gibbs said. “That is not to say that violence is going to end tomorrow.”
A new Newsweek poll has found that a majority of Republicans believe President Obama “sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world.” Only 33 percent of Republicans said the “allegation” was “probably not true,” while 38 percent said it was probably true and 14 percent said it was “make sense of the world I see,” Beck said on the website.
Two U.S. men of Yemeni descent were arrested in Amsterdam yesterday, after arriving on a flight from Chicago with suspicious items in their baggage. Authorities say the men had a mobile phone taped to a Pepto-Bismol bottle and other phones and watches strapped together.
Yesterday, President Obama urged Senate Republicans to “drop the blockade” on the Small Business Jobs bill, which “will cut more taxes and make available more loans, including $55 billion in tax relief.” After the Republican minority blocked the bill from coming to the Senate floor in July, Obama asked Congress to make it the “first order of business” when it returns from recess in September.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) “was dealt another major setback Monday when the Alaska Libertarian Party announced it would not swap its chosen candidate for the Republican senator if she loses her party’s nomination.” “The party voted unanimously Sunday not to allow Murkowski to run on its ticket,” so her only remaining option to stay in the race would be to run as a write-in candidate.
The Justice Department filed another lawsuit against Arizona yesterday, arguing “that a network of community colleges acted illegally in requiring noncitizens to provide their green cards before they could be hired for jobs.” The suit alleges that the colleges “discriminated against nearly 250 noncitizen job applicants by mandating that they fill out more documents than required by law to prove their eligibility to work.”
And finally: Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin took to Twitter yesterday to bang out a condemnation of the “sheeple” (sheep people) in the “silly media” for supposedly under counting the crowd size at Fox News personality Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally. Unfortunately, when Palin tried to mention her buddy Beck, she got his twitter handle wrong, name dropping psychedelic indie-pop musician Beck instead.
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9/11 Victims? Families Group: Sept. 11 Mosque Protests ?Disrespect The Memories Of Our Loved Ones?
One of the chief arguments critics have employed against the construction of the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero in New York is that the center would be “insensitive” to the families of the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks. “[T]he overriding concern should be the sensitivities of the families of the victims,” wrote Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who surprised many by coming out against the Islamic center. “The question here is a question of sensitivity, people’s feelings,” said former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. Some 9/11 families “are crying over this,” he added.
But now a “key” 9/11 victims’ families group is breaking with the mosque opposition movement, demanding that an anti-mosque protest planned for September 11th be rescheduled, “and, if it isn’t, that participants back out.” In an email to members reposted by Politico, Dennis McKeon (who started the group Where to Turn as a clearinghouse of information about the attacks and subsequent plans to redevelop Ground Zero) wrote that any protests planned for the ninth anniversary of the attacks “disrespect the memories of our loved ones on this sacred day at this sacred site”:
As most of you probably know there is a proposed protest rally against the mosque being planned for 9/11. There are also reports that there is a pro mosque rally in the works for 9/11 as well. … We have always stood against any rallies scheduled for September 11th and we will do so again with these events.
We will be joining other 9/11 organizations in asking that the organizers change the date for these events. If they refuse to change the date we will also ask those scheduled to appear to withdraw from the events.
Over the past 9 years more and more of what’s been going on at Ground Zero has excluded the families. …
We will never support such activities that disrespect the memories of our loved ones on this sacred day at this sacred site.
Indeed, while conservative critics have attempted to co-opt the families of the 9/11 victims for political purposes, painting them as monolithically opposed to the proposed community center, in reality, their opinions are split, much like those of other New Yorkers.
The September 11th protest is to be the biggest yet, featuring former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, right-wing media tycoon Andrew Breitbart, and Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders, a proud hater of Islam. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was scheduled to deliver a video address, but canceled under mysterious circumstances. The protest is being organized by anti-mosque crusader Pamela Geller, who has organized other demonstrations against the proposed center, and uses her blog Atlas Shurgs to pump out new smears against the project’s organizers every day.
