Month: August 2010
Guess Which Cable News Pundits Liked Obama’s Support of ‘Ground Zero’ Islamic Center – Hint: Their Network’s 4th Largest Investor Is a Muslim
OBAMA: Let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.
Given the hyper-partisan tenor of our times, you might assume that the right-wing Obama haters at Fox News would seize on this statement as proof that the president is the Muslim, socialist Nazi they have long claimed him to be.
But in this particular case, the world has turned upside down. Here’s CNN pundit Erick Erickson, on his own blog, suggesting that because the president supports the rights of Muslims to build an Islamic center on private property, he therefore also endorses human sacrifice:
[What] about the Greater First Church of Satan wanting to do human sacrifice of a willing victim? I guess our founding principles demand the president support that too. After all, it is a religious belief and only willing participants.
Poll: News Media Is Just As Unpopular As Least Popular Political Group: Republicans in Congress
Last week we learned from the new Wall St. Journal/NBC poll that the most unpopular group in politics today is the Republicans in Congress.
While Pres. Obama has the approval of just under half the respondents in the poll, and congressional Democrats have a troubling 33 percent approval among voters, the Boehner-McConnell team in Congress is at an all time low of 24 percent.
Now a new Gallup finds that the news media is just 1 point more popular with the public than congressional Republicans, 25 percent/24 percent:
Americans continue to express near-record-low confidence in newspapers and television news — with no more than 25 percent of Americans saying they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in either. These views have hardly budged since falling more than 10 percentage points from 2003-2007….
Americans’ confidence in newspapers and television news is on par with Americans’ lackluster confidence in banks and slightly better than their dismal rating of Health Management Organizations and big business.
The decline in trust since 2003 is also evident in a 2009 Gallup poll that asked about confidence and trust in the “mass media” more broadly. While perceptions of media bias present a viable hypothesis, Americans have not over the same period grown any more likely to say the news media are too conservative or too liberal.
The Wall St. Journal/NBC poll also found that tea baggers are slightly less popular than congressional Democrats — 30 percent/33 percent — and for the first time more people had an unfavorable opinion of tea baggers than favorable, 34 percent/30 percent.
Verbatim
Women are realizing more and more knowing that they dont have to settle with a man just to have a child.
– Actress Jennifer Aniston promoting a movie in which plays a single mother.
She’s throwing a message out to 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds that, ‘Hey, you don’t need a guy! You don’t need a dad!’ That’s destructive to our society.
– Republican Party/Fox News commenter Bill O’Reilly
Of course, the ideal scenario for parenting is obviously two parents of a mature age. Parenting is one of the hardest jobs on earth. And, of course, many women dream of finding Prince Charming (with fatherly instincts), but for those who’ve not yet found their Bill O’Reilly, I’m just glad science has provided a few other options.
– Aniston
She’s throwing a message out to 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds that, ‘Hey, you don’t need a guy! You don’t need a dad!’ That’s destructive to our society.
– Republican Party/Fox News commenter Bill O’Reilly
Of course, the ideal scenario for parenting is obviously two parents of a mature age. Parenting is one of the hardest jobs on earth. And, of course, many women dream of finding Prince Charming (with fatherly instincts), but for those who’ve not yet found their Bill O’Reilly, I’m just glad science has provided a few other options.
– Aniston
Obama Opens Iftar Dinner at the White House
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It’s just a shame that he had to spend so much time establishing the duty to protect religious freedom. That should be a given.
Finally – Mainstream Media Points Out That Gay Marriage Is Twice As Popular Now As Interracial Marriage Was When It Was Legalized in 1967
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This is a factoid I have tried to get out there for a while now — and it’s shocking that it was Chuck Todd, one of the main regurgitators of conventional wisdom in the Beltway kool kids club, who put it on TV.
It’s wrong to base protecting people’s rights on polling, but if that’s how it is going to be done now, then it should at least be consistent.
Ennumerati
44 percent
— Gov. Charlie Crist’s job approval rating, an all-time low for him, and the lowest posted by a Florida governor in 16 years. It’s the first time Crist’s job performance has dropped below 50 percent.
Am I Illegal? Are You?
If “birthright” citizens, as anti-immigrant Republicans and tea baggers call them, are declared illegal, how far back will we go? Will I, and other descendants of illegals, become retroactive non-citizens?
My mother’s father came to this country illegally from Italy in the World War I era wave that brought most of the people who later produced such cultural touchstones as the Godfather epics, Little Italies in major cities, pizza as fast food, and the reality show Jersey Shore.
On his first attempt to become an American, my teenage grandfather spent the crossing in the hold of the ocean liner George Washington alternately trying to memorize the identity on the papers he purchased illegally and vomiting from seasickness. When the boat finally landed, he was held at Ellis Island and found to be without papers — a WOP — and shipped back to Italy.
There is no point in trying to figure out who is worthy of a piece of the American pie
Many months later, after earning enough money to try again, he made a second crossing, studying his illegal papers until he had his false I.D. down perfectly. He had also made connections with Italians in this country who vouched for him at Ellis Island by telling the authorities that he had both family and a job here.
