He's set to debate the woman who once asked him a question about "Nazi" health reform policies.

The president's chief of staff would have to start rounding up support for a mayoral bid quickly.

[Ed. note: Thought-provoking post by Seminal community member jamesboyce.]

Enough is enough. Enough with the bigotry and the hate. Enough with the race-baiting and the fake debate about the Ground Zero Mosque. Enough of white Americans putting up fences to keep their fellow humans out. Enough of the birthers.

Enough of Christian hypocrites who thump their Bibles while denying men and women the right to marry the one they love. Enough of conservatives holding up the Constitution having never actually read it and preaching about one nation under God and also denying that every American has the right to worship the God of their choosing.

Enough of Progressives and Democrats who engage in these debates rather than attack these bigoted racist hypocrites. Enough of the hate-mongers getting all the attention and press.

You have to draw the line somewhere. Guess what? Now’s the time.

You are entitled to your own opinion, after all, this is America and there is Freedom of Speech. But just as important, there is freedom of worship. Because of our freedoms, there, ironically, is the freedom to burn books. However.

Because we are Americans, because we defend and fight and preserve the right of free speech, because we have seen what happens in countries who don’t defend these freedoms, we do not burn books. Let me repeat that.

Americans Don’t Burn Books. . . .

We print books that maybe you don’t people want to read. We print books filled with hate. We print and print and print books of all kinds, but we don’t burn books. By defending everyone’s right to speak, we defend our right to speak. By defending everyone’s right to their own religion, we defend our own right to our own religion.

We have gone to war with people who do burn books; Adolph Hitler comes to mind. Stalin. Pol Pot. There are others. Our military graveyards are full of the men and women who protected us, who gave their lives for us. Not one soldier has ever died, so we could burn books.

Americans Don’t Burn Books.

And we especially don’t burn the books of another person’s religion.

You may or may not believe in the Bible, but if you think the Bible is the worst book in the world, as an American, you don’t have to read it, you don’t have to believe, no one can force you to or hold it against you if you don’t, but you can not burn the Bible.

You may or may not believe in what is in the Torah. You may think the Torah is the worst book in the world, as an American, you don’t have to read it, you don’t have to believe it, no one can force you to, or hold it against you if you don’t but you can not burn the Torah.

Buddhist books, Pagan books, Hindu books. You can’t burn them.

And you can’t burn the Koran.

You may or may not believe in what is in the Koran. You may think the Koran is the worst book in the world, as an American, you don’t have to read it, you don’t have to believe it, no one can force you to, or hold it against you if you don’t but you can not burn the Koran.

I salute my friends at Human Rights First who are standing up against the bigots who would burn the Koran on 9/11. And if you want to, you can click here and get a free bookmark from Human Rights First. It says:

Americans Don’t Burn Books.

But other people do. Notice the crowd watching the book burning and who is in it.

[photo: mrtwism via Flickr]

 

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Every once in while I take a peek at the zeitgeist, looking at fastest moving stories in mainstream media or most popular searches on the internet.

And nearly every time I am sickened by what I find, like these results this morning from Google Trends captured about 10:00 a.m. EDT.

Hot TopicsNew!   (USA) [These represent the topics of the fastest moving stories this morning.]
1. samsung fascinate
2. mark hurd
3. google homepage today
4. chile miners trapped
5. burn quran
6. schimmel
7. rihanna only girl
8. ole miss
9. boulder fire
10. london tube strike

Hot Searches   (USA) [These represent the most frequently searched terms this morning.]
1. bob schimmel
2. dove world outreach center
3. google logo
4. google logo hidden message
5. google homepage today
6. google balls
7. erin gray
8. google dots
9. college football rankings
10. google home page

You have to be kidding me; this is what our country is most concerned with as of mid-morning on the first day back to work after a holiday, the first day of school for many kids, nearly two years after the stock market collapsed, 20 months after President Obama was elected to office?  . . .

We’re not still angry about the horrible mess left behind in the Gulf of Mexico? We aren’t looking for alternative energy sources or corresponding "green jobs"? What about tax cuts versus stimulus spending — we aren’t concerned with making the most effective choice this morning? Have we no worries about pissing away blood and treasure in Afghanistan while nuclear Pakistan continues to suffer from a horrific flood?

We get the government we deserve, and frankly, we get the economy we deserve, too, if this is what is at the top our minds as a national aggregate this morning.

I’m sure some folks will beg to differ, pleading this is not what they are thinking about. I know; me too. But we have an enormous problem when the only things which are likely to move onto these these lists are topics like "boise state virginia tech" or Koran-burning "pastor terry jones," to replace Rihanna and London’s Tube strike in popularity and frequency.

[photo: Rev Dan Catt via Flickr]

 

Related posts:

1. Saturday Art: Leo Reynolds’ Photography
2. Dear Americans, We Are One Nation

When D.H. Lawrence finished the last and final writing of Lady Chatterly's Lover, he was not surprised to find resistance from literary agents and publishers. Urged to change the text so that could be published as a work of literary merit, he refused to remove the sex and four-letter words that made it objectionable.

At the time, Lawrence's health was failing and as he wrote later in "A Propos of Lady Chatterly's Lover", he was tempted to make the requested changes for money but doing so was impossible for him. He refused to meet the demands of what he called the "censor morons.

Read more

As progressives think about the prospect of a third party, many are looking in unlikely places for new allies – even as unlikely as the Tea Party. The Tea Party was quickly co-opted by the Republicans and the MSM, but the original feeling that gave the movement life bears some similarity to the discontent that is gripping the left.

They, too, are disgusted with “business as usual” in Washington and want to rid the government of its heavy corporate influence. They, too, have been enraged by the bailouts and continued bonuses for Wall Street as ordinary Americans suffer in the prolonged recession. They, too, are fed up with the inertia of the two-party system, and are just as tired of holding their noses and voting for Republicans as progressives are for Democrats.

Certainly, there are issues that progressives and Tea Partiers will never agree on, such as abortion and gay rights. But some are saying that the two camps could lay aside their ideological differences and unite for the common goal of “throwing the bums out.” Perhaps the landscape is shifting, it is said, and folks who once represented opposite ends of the spectrum are now political neighbors with a common enemy.

It’s a tantalizing idea, but one with which progressives should be very cautious. We do have in common this disgust with the politil and financial powers-that-be, but we share little else. If we dig beneath the outer layer of discontent, we find two utterly opposed worldviews and visions for the future of our country.

As a minister in the small-town South (or the “Real America,” as we are sometimes called), I have become quite familiar with the emotion that drives the Tea Party. It’s not anger, or even fear. It’s grief. It’s a deep and profound sense of loss. The country and the culture has changed incredibly in recent decades, and in their minds, not for the better.

Progressives look at the past fifty years and celebrate the greater tolerance and diversity that has been achieved, and we look for that process to continue moving forward in the coming decades. The Tea Party looks at the same time period and sees the spiritual and moral decay of what was once a great nation. That is why we chant slogans about hope and change, and they talk about restoring our nation and sing songs such as “We Want America Back.”

In short, progressives look at how much things have changed, and want more changes. The Tea Party just wants to turn the clock back to 1955. These two diametrically opposed visions manage to find common cause in opposing the corporatists who are currently in power, but is that enough for even a temporary marriage? I don’t think it is. Any effort to “throw the bums out” must include a plan for what to do once the bums are gone – and all progressives and Tea Partiers could ever do in such a situation is to turn on each other.

Instead, progressives should be looking for allies closer to home. Moderate liberals, independents, libertarians, and even some reasonable conservatives are the fields we need to be plowing . These are the groups that might share in our anger and disaffection, but even more importantly, have some sort of shared vision for the future that runs deeper than just grabbing our pitchforks and storming the castle.

[Photo from Fibonacci Blue via Flickr]

 

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The Mike Castle vs. Christine O’Donnell primary is getting people all tied up in knots. You see, Delaware is a tiny, liberal state. Democrats have a 44% to 32% advantage in party registration, Obama has a 55% approval rating there, and there hasn’t been a Republican in the Senate there for almost 40 years. Because [...]

A minister in Gainesville Florida is calling for a “Burn a Quran Day” on September 11. He feels the gesture will be in honor of those who died on 9/11, he says, “of the fallen victims of 9/11 and to stand against the evil of Islam.” Terry Jones is the founder of Dove World Outreach [...]

Moonbats like to use the word “unsustainable.” How’s this for unsustainable? A jobless couple rake in £95,000 in state benefits a year — and even have breakfast delivered to the door each morning, courtesy of the taxpayer. The money — five times the starting salary of a teacher — goes to unemployed Pete and Sam [...]

Congratulations to Pakistani bureaucrat Ayatullah Durrani for figuring out how to solve all of Muslims’ many problems — have Comrade Obama declare himself World Caliph: A Pakistani minister wants US President Barack Obama to offer Eid prayers at Ground Zero in New York and become the “Amir-ul-Momineen” or Caliph of Muslims. Minister of State for [...]

Some “Summer of recovery.” Al Sharpton is one of America’s most successful shakedown artists and even he can’t pay his bills. An accounting firm hired by Al Sharpton’s National Action Network found the civil-rights group in such financial disarray that it flunked its record-keeping — and may not even survive, The Post has learned. …The [...]

Last year, Freedomworks had a massive 9/12 rally in DC and it went so well that they’re doing it again this year. Freedomworks. 9/12 rally. DC. Be there. I will.

I often hear my critics say that people should have a Right to something like Housing, Food or Shelter. Declaring something a Right does nothing to provide a good or service for someone. It simply makes people feel morally superior. I would rather have people provided with goods or services, without a right to it. [...]

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Sometimes, when you take two bad things and mix them together, you get something very good. The classic example is two poisons -- chlorine and sodium. Together, they make salt,...

Paul

When the American left was out of power, it faced the same kind of electoral decisions that now confront conservatives -- how to a weigh Democratic candidates' ideological purity against their electability. Activists on the left resolved the decision wisely, along the lines suggested years ago by William Buckley. They supported leftists in states where they were electable, and backed or tolerated centrists and center-left candidates in reddish states.

Thus, the left attempted to oust Joe LIeberman -- a liberal on domestic issues but not key foreign policy and national security matters -- on the understanding that lefty Ned Lamont's nomination would not cause the seat to fall into Republican hands. On the other hand, the left was quite supportive of James Webb in Virginia notwithstanding his Republican background and substantial questions about his willingness automatically to support leftist positions.

And the left gave Ben Nelson a pass in Nebraska. Left-wing activists could have labeled him a "DINO" (or something equally clever) and tried to prevent his re-nomination. But the Daily Kos crowd recognized that Nelson was the only Dem who could win in Nebraska, so it held its fire.

The left was rewarded for the soundness of these judgments when Webb and Nelson became the 59th and 60th votes for Obamacare.

Its judgment on Lieberman was sound too. He blocked the public option, but supported the final bill. Lamont would have been better for the left and nominating him didn't cost the left his seat. Lieberman remained in place and gave the left more than half a loaf on health care.

Let's compare this pattern of behavior with that of conservative activists this season. Early on, conservative activists showed the same good judgment the left exhibited in 2006. Far from balking at Scott Brown's centrist tendencies, many conservative activists worked hard for him.

Later, In certain high profile races, conservative activists helped take down center-right candidates (candidates more conservative than Brown). But this generally occurred in red states like Kentucky, Utah, and Alaska.

Tea Party activists also helped defeat candidates deemed insufficiently conservative in Colorado and Nevada -- states that are neither red nor blue. But in Colorado, the candidate they pushed -- Ken Buck -- is fairly attractive and was doing as well as his Republican opponent in head-to-head polls against the Democratic incumbent.

Nevada was a different story. Sharron Angle has not proved to be an attractive candidate so far, and her nomination seems to have given Harry Reid at least a 50 percent chance of surviving in year when he should be toast. But Angle cannot be deemed unelectable. Thus, the Buckley maxim arguably has not been violated.

Finally, though, we get to Delaware. There, in one of America's bluest states, the Tea Party Express and other activists are backing arch-conservative Christine O'Donnell. But there's no good case to made that O'Donnell is electable. She was trounced by Joe Biden last time out and she trails the Democrat running this time by about 10 percentage points.

Moreover, questions surround O'Donnell's finances. As I wrote here, I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt until I see concrete evidence of wrongdoing. But that won't stop O'Donnell from being hammered and ridiculed if she is nominated.

In addition, O'Donnell lately has displayed poor judgment and a lack of regard for the truth. She claimed in a radio interview that she had carried two of three Delaware counties in her race against Biden. Actually, she carried none. And, when asked about the Rasmussen poll showing her well behind the Democrat, she suggested that Rasmussen was fudging his results to favor the Republican establishment.

It's one thing to be strongly conservative; it's another to be paranoid.

Meanwhile, Rep. Mike Castle, O'Donnell's opponent in the Republican primary, is a heavy favorite to win the seat if nominated (and assuming O'Donnell doesn't run as a third-party candidate). Castle has a double-digit lead over the Democrat. And Delaware voters have repeatedly elected him to state-wide office by hefty margins, even in not-so-good Republican years.

Castle is what I call a RIHHVO -- Republican in half his votes only. As a Senator, his votes will upset me about half of the time. But it isn't rocket science to understand that half a loaf is better than none; even the left figured that out in 2006.

And this truism is especially salient in the Delaware race this year because Castle, as the successor to an appointed Senator, will take office upon his election, rather than in January. The lame duck session will probably be the Senate's last big chance to cause great mischief for a while. Accordingly, conservatives should be focused on preventing a rubber-stamping liberal from serving in that session, not on nominating an ideological pure candidate with virtually no chance of carrying blue Delaware.

Unfortunately, many conservative activists don't see it this way. It's disconcerting to realize that our activists aren't as astute as the likes of Markos Moulitsas.

John

The Democrats' fundamental problem is that most voters don't want what they're selling, i.e., more government. (As Michael Barone put it, recalling the joke about the dog food ad campaign, "the dogs don't like it.") This is reflected in Scott Rasmussen's finding that by almost a three-to-one margin, likely voters would rather have less government and lower taxes than more government and higher taxes:

One could draw many conclusions from this, but I would suggest two. First, far from being a fringe phenomenon, the Tea Party movement represents the solid core of mainstream American opinion. Second, when the Republicans take control of Congress, they should not be afraid to cut spending and programs.

John

I had no idea what Scott was talking about when he wrote that Barack Obama got his complaint that "they talk about me like a dog" from a Jimi Hendrix song. I didn't like Hendrix even at the time, and havent listened to him in decades. But Yahoo News has picked up Scott's theme, without attribution:

Has President Obama been listening to a lot of Jimi Hendrix lately? With just under two months to go before Election Day, Obama kicked off the fall campaign season Monday with an aggressive speech targeting Republicans. But it was an off-script moment in the speech that's attracted the most attention, as Obama accused his GOP critics of talking about him "like a dog." ...

Though Obama didn't acknowledge it, the line was a verbatim quote from "Stone Free," the first song Hendrix wrote after moving to England in 1966. "They talk about me like a dog," the song says. "Talkin about the clothes I wear. But they don't realize they're the ones who's square."

It's unclear if Obama consciously or unconsciously cited the lyric. A White House spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

OK, it's possible that someone at Yahoo, like Scott, recalled the Hendrix lyric. But I doubt it; I don't think Yahoo has any employees old enough to remember him.

An extremist Florida church says it will go ahead with plans to mark the ninth anniversary of 9/11 by setting copies of the Quran on fire, even though authorities have warned that such actions would endanger Americans fighting, serving and traveling abroad.

The White House said the event “puts our troops in harm’s way,” while the State Department called it “un-American.”

The Dove World Outreach Center is led by a man named Terry Jones, pictured, who wrote a book called “Islam Is of the Devil.” Jones’ raving can be witnessed in the video below.

There is currently a debate raging on his “International Burn a Koran Day” Facebook page.  —PZS

Washington Post:

[State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley] said U.S. diplomats had already reported small-scale demonstrations against the talk of Quran burning in several countries “where anxiety levels are building because of the publicity surrounding this proposed action. It does put the lives of ordinary Americans at risk, as well as diplomats, as well as soldiers,” he said.

The Christian minister who is organizing the Quran burning says he will go ahead despite the government’s concerns. Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center, a small, evangelical Christian church in Gainesville with an anti-Islam philosophy, said he has gotten more than 100 death threats and has started wearing a pistol on his hip.

Read more

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The ink has dried on President Obama’s much ballyhooed health care reform bill—that’s “Obamacare” for all the haters—but according to select scheming members of the GOP, the fight might not be over yet on this one.  —KA

AP via Google News:

If you thought passing the health care overhaul was messy, wait until Republicans try to repeal it if they regain power this fall.

It could come down to who blinks first, with some Republicans raising the prospect of a government shutdown.

Even if Republicans succeed beyond any current predictions and capture both the Senate and the House, they wouldn’t have enough GOP votes to overcome President Barack Obama’s veto.

But Republicans could still fall back on the congressional power of the purse, denying the administration billions of dollars to carry out the most far-reaching social legislation since Medicare and Medicaid.

“The endgame is a fight over funding,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.

Read more

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A little more than 10 years ago, Sweden adopted a radical approach to prostitution. Rather than punish women who sell their bodies, Sweden publicly outs the men who pay for sex. The result is a 50 percent reduction in street prostitution, reports the Christian Science Monitor.

Christian Science Monitor:

Sweden does not penalize the persons in prostitution but makes resources available to them. Instead it targets and exposes the anonymous perpetrators—the buyers, mostly men, who purchase mainly women and children in prostitution.

The key to the law’s effectiveness lies not so much in penalizing the men (punishments are modest) but in removing the invisibility of the buyers and making their crimes public. Men now fear being outed as prostitution users.

Read more

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It may be historically hard to hang on to a majority in both the House and Senate, but of course the dominant Democrats in Congress are hoping for a midterm miracle in November.

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By Amy Goodman

The ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States should serve as a moment to reflect on tolerance. It should be a day of peace.

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Lost amidst the welcome news of British-French cooperation on military cost-sharing in some tough talk from their ministers of defense on NATO.

Parker. And Spitzer!

Shhhhhh.

Stone free.

"All over me."

Or something.

Some believe the president of ABC News was pushed out by the president of the Walt Disney Company.

But in Colorado, a quirky contest is attempting to buck the trend of disagreements over details.

'He keeps treating this country like a fire hydrant," says the former presidential candidate.

Several of the names would not possibly have featured in any presidential primary vote a year ago.

The president plans to shift his tone on the economy.

An article in The New York Times Magazine doesn’t becomes the big political story in London every week, but the Times piece “Tabloid Hack Attack on Royals, and Beyond” has been a front-pager and led on the TV news here. The tabloid in question is the News of the World, one of whose reporters was imprisoned a few years ago for “phone-hacking,” or intercepting cell phone calls, most notably from the two young princes, William and Harry. Although Andy Coulson, the editor of the paper at the time, was forced to leave his job, he denied any knowledge of malfeasance. But the Times story cast lengthy and well-sourced doubt on his denials, and his credibility in general. 

That might not have caused so much comment here if it hadn’t been for the truly astonishing fact that, shortly after his departure from the paper, Coulson was hired as “communications director” (what we called a press officer in less grandiose times) by David Cameron, then the Conservative opposition leader, now prime minister. A storm in the media teacup thus became very big political news—and for the Cameron government, a potential disaster, entirely self-inflicted. 

If not the most illustrious of the London Sunday papers, the News of the World is one of the oldest. For most of the past century, a diet of sex-and-scandal has made it the best-selling British paper, and, since 1969, it has belonged to Rupert Murdoch. It was his first London paper, after he acquired it in fierce competition with the late Robert Maxwell (what a pair!). Its story has never been more lurid than in early 2007, when Clive Goodman, the paper’s “royal correspondent” (what a job title!), was sent to prison for the phone hacking. Months later, Cameron airily waved aside any misgivings about the wisdom of hiring Coulson, saying that he believed in giving people a second chance, as though the purpose of Tory headquarters was to rehabilitate offenders. But if he hoped that Coulson’s record would be quickly forgotten, he could not have been more wrong. Last year, The Guardian returned to the story, showing how extensive hacking had been at the News of the World, which, in the meantime, has paid out huge sums to placate its other hacking victims, such as Gordon Taylor, a sometimes soccer supremo, who received £700,000. (The paper also paid a very large kiss-off to Clive Goodman to buy his silence)

In July 2009, Coulson appeared in front of a House of Commons committee and denied any knowledge of the scandal, saying "my instructions to the staff were clear—we did not use subterfuge of any kind." That didn’t look very convincing then, and it seems far less so after the Times story, in which several former employees of News of the World said that the culture of illicit bugging and hacking was widespread at the paper and that Coulson was in it up to his neck. Sean Hoare, who worked for Coulson, said that what his former editor told the parliamentary committee was “a lie.”

Hardened media-watchers will notice scores being settled. While it might seem puzzling that the haughty Old Gray Lady of Eighth Avenue would bother with a few tabloid sleazebags by the Thames, the Times is locked in bitter competition with the Wall Street Journal, a recent Murdoch acquisition. And there is no love lost between The Guardian and Murdoch papers, either.

And yet, all of that palls beside the political ramifications of the Times story. Some of what happened is still a matter of dispute. What is not is this: In July 2007, the leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party chose to employ Andy Coulson. David Cameron is a clever man and a plausible politician. We all make mistakes, which may be forgivable or remediable, and I’ve described one or two of his (“Tory Story,” August 12). But some mistakes are neither easily remedied nor properly forgiven, and this one was so grotesque as to defy belief. Writing with as much restraint and understatement as I can, let me say that Cameron was tonto, meshuggah, crazy, bonkers, or off his chump to have hired Coulson. The man had just been sacked as editor of a salacious tabloid after a sordid scandal that had seen a reporter jailed, and that plainly cast a huge shadow over Coulson’s own integrity. What more did Cameron need, a neon sign on top of Coulson’s head reading “I am trouble”?

Thanks to the Times exposé, the story has become far moreembarrassing for Downing Street—and made it a fresh target. Parliament has just returned from its summer vacation, a break that, a very long time ago, coincided with the season for hay-making and harvesting, and Labour is determined to make as much hay of another kind as possible out of the Coulson affair. In the Commons on Monday, opposition MPs pummeled Theresa May, the home secretary, who had to say limply that the police could re-open inquiries if they liked. 

What Labour most enjoys at present is stirring up trouble between the Tories and their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats. So the sharpest Labour barb of all came from Alan Johnson, the shadow home secretary. He quoted Chris Huhne, a leading Lib Dem who is now in the Cabinet but who last year called for Coulson to be sacked: "I agree with those sentiments, forcefully expressed by her cabinet colleague,” Johnson said meanly to May, “Does she?" Another minister (a Tory) has asininely complained that Labour is acting for political advantage. Well, of course it is. Why wouldn’t it, and why shouldn’t it?

It will also be worth watching the reaction of News International, Murdoch’s media group, and the old guy himself. Murdoch is gloriously amoral about such matters as factual veracity, and thick-skinned when it comes to tabloid excesses. But he understands the bottom line. The News of the World and The Sun are highly profitable (unlike the London Times, which loses money every year but lives off the immoral earnings of its wicked sisters). If Coulson’s old paper finds itself forced to make many more really big pay-outs, as seems more than likely, it will hurt Murdoch where he minds. It’s also worth keeping an eye on the Metropolitan Police, which has a chummy relationship with the Murdoch papers. Bill Keller, editor of The New York Times, says that “Scotland Yard has declined our repeated requests for interviews and refused to release information we requested months ago under the British freedom of information law. ... Our story speaks for itself and makes clear that the police already have evidence that they have chosen not to pursue.” Our own Financial Times has added that there should be an independent review of the accusation that “the police may have dropped a valid investigation.”

But this renewed scandal must hurt the government most of all. The FT is one London paper with no axe to grind. It has called on Cameron to investigate the matter, and asked meiotically, “Was he not reckless to have employed Mr Coulson, given the murkiness of the allegations surrounding the News of the World?” Even Cameron must be ruefully asking himself the same question. One of many English colloquialisms for being fed up is to say, “I’m hacked off.” Quite soon, that phrase may have painful new meaning for the prime minister.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s books include The Strange Death of Tory England and Yo, Blair!

For more TNR, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

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ORLANDO, Fla. -- A child's toy sparked a bomb scare late Tuesday morning. Tuesday, September 7, 2010. [Discuss] [Link]