On Friday, we pointed to a story buried deep in the New York Times, in the Religion section, about a mosque in the World Trade Center, where, as likely as not, Muslims were praying on Sept. 11, 2001, the day the madmen jet-bombed the buildings.
There was also an area set aside for prayer on the stairwell on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower that was used by workers in the tourist restaurant on the top floor.
Prince Alwaleed, Fox News' fourth-largest investorAt the White House Iftar dinner on Friday night, Pres. Obama expressed his support for Muslims’ right to build the (not at) “Ground Zero” (not a) mosque:
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.
We’ll soon be subjected to Donald Trump’s second inaugural,
And the rich guys’ cash-for-access options are deplorable.
Two million bucks gets you a chance To dine with Melania and JD Vance,
Which sounds to us like the very definition of “horrible.”
“As President-elect Donald Trump fills out his Cabinet and chooses his closet advisers ahead of Inauguration Day, many African American leaders are asking why more Black people haven’t been appointed to key positions.”
“If you defended the 34x felon, who committed sexual assault, stole national security documents, and tried running a coup on his country… you can sit out the Hunter Biden pardon discussion.”
“The only reason to nominate someone like Patel to run the FBI is to commit impeachable abuses of power. Trump makes no secret that this is, in fact, his purpose. Patel is similarly explicit on the point. Yet the Senate might very well confirm the man once Trump removes the incumbent FBI director and nominates Patel to replace him. … If it actually does so, would that constitute ‘consent’ to impeachable offenses?”
The author of an email critical of Fox News host-turned-Trump Defense Secretary pick Pete Hegseth threatened New Yorker writer Jane Mayer that “if you print that, I will deny I wrote it,” and when Mayer reminded him “that it had been sent from the same personal e-mail account that he still uses,” the author wrote, “I don’t care. I’ll just say it never happened.”
America’s job market rebounded in November, adding 227,000 workers in a solid recovery from the previous month, when the effects of strikes and hurricanes had sharply diminished employers’ payrolls, reported the Associated Press. Last month’s hiring growth was up considerably from a meager gain of 36,000 jobs in October. The government also revised up its estimate of job growth in September and October by a combined 56,000.
“Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, spent over a quarter of a billion dollars in the final months of this year’s election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, federal filings revealed on Thursday,” the New York Times reports. “The sum is a fraction of Mr. Musk’s wealth. But it is nonetheless a staggering amount from a single donor, who poured the cash into allied groups and is now playing a role in helping shape the next administration.”
“Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun invested $30 million in President-elect Donald Trump’s crypto project three weeks after the election, helping Trump make a potentially hefty profit,” the Washington Post reports. “Sun, who recently made headlines for buying, then eating, a $6 million banana art piece, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission on charges of fraud, market manipulation and other alleged violations.”
Gas prices continued to decrease across the country, with the national average cost for a gallon of regular gas falling to $3.037, according to AAA, reports Washington Examiner. This was a 3-cent drop from a week ago, when the cost of regular gas was $3.067 per gallon. Tuesday’s price is also less expensive than a month ago, when a gallon of regular gas was $3.103.
