For days, Matthews and his colleagues on MSNBC have been calling upon Republicans to speak out against Jones.

On Wednesday, the former Alaska governor did exactly that at her Facebook page and at Twitter. 

But this wasn’t enough for Matthews who repeatedly on the 5PM installment of “Hardball” attacked Palin for being too “soft” in her admonishment of Jones, and actually accused her of giving the Pastor the linkage between burning Korans and the controversy surrounding the Ground Zero mosque.

Matthews also included House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Oh.) in his pathetic plot:

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Democratic strategist Steve McMahon joins us now, along with Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez.

You know, this is one of those moments where, OK, I`m going to take you on, Leslie, here. Ready?

LESLIE SANCHEZ, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: All right.

MATTHEWS: I think that people like Boehner and Sarah Palin are the first people in the news cycle to put out the word there`s some linkage between burning the Koran on national — international television and the mosque a couple blocks away from the World Trade Centers.

Honestly, was Matthews being intentionally naive or lying? The whole reason media have given Jones all this attention is because of the Ground Zero mosque. Any suggestion to the contrary is absurd: 

MATTHEWS: And now these people down there, this minister, discovered, hey, this is handy. I will trade one for the other. It turns out the trade wasn`t real, but at least he`s pretending.

Your thoughts about accomplices before — accessories before and after the fact here.

SANCHEZ: I think that`s a stretch.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Why is that a stretch?

SANCHEZ: Because –

MATTHEWS: Have you ever heard these ministers talk about a link with the mosque before Mr. Boehner or Sarah Palin mentioned it?

SANCHEZ: Well, I don`t read everything with the mosque.

But let`s look at the realities. You have got 50 people in a garage that say these crazy things and, all of a sudden, we have all the networks, the president, and everybody responding to them.

Look at it for what it really is.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: So, is Sarah Palin one of the 50 crazy people in the mosque, or what?

How disgraceful! 

SANCHEZ: I think what is interesting is that Sarah Palin is brought up again. She puts a tweet out there. She starts talking about it, and everybody wants to say she has directed and shaped this debate.

MATTHEWS: “People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive” — I would say it`s more than insensitive — “and an unnecessary provocation.”

That`s pretty soft language compared to the way she talked about the mosque.

Actually, why don’t we look at Palin’s entire posting at Facebook:

Book burning is antithetical to American ideals. People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation – much like building a mosque at Ground Zero.

I would hope that Pastor Terry Jones and his supporters will consider the ramifications of their planned book-burning event. It will feed the fire of caustic rhetoric and appear as nothing more than mean-spirited religious intolerance. Don’t feed that fire. If your ultimate point is to prove that the Christian teachings of mercy, justice, freedom, and equality provide the foundation on which our country stands, then your tactic to prove this point is totally counter-productive. 

Our nation was founded in part by those fleeing religious persecution. Freedom of religion is integral to our charters of liberty. We don’t need to agree with each other on theological matters, but tolerating each other without unnecessarily provoking strife is how we ensure a civil society. In this as in all things, we should remember the Golden Rule. Isn’t that what the Ground Zero mosque debate has been about? 

That seems like a pretty strong condemnation of Jones’s plan, doesn’t it? Yet Matthews never once read the entire thing to his viewers. Instead, he continued with his pathetic plot: 

SANCHEZ: They`re — not judging her, it`s the fact –

MATTHEWS: It`s insensitive? We have a travel alert.

(CROSSTALK)

SANCHEZ: But why pick out Sarah Palin? I guess that`s my point.

MATTHEWS: Because I`m looking at the news that came in this morning. And, all of a sudden, she`s getting her fingers into this thing.

Your thoughts, Steve.

I think it`s incredible that she would be so soft — taking such a soft line on this guy burning the Koran, because you never attack to the right when you`re on the right. That`s what I think is going on here.

Excuse me! Matthews and his network have been criticizing Republicans for not speaking out against this guy. Now that some have, he accuses them of aiding and abetting the Pastor!

How pathetic: 

SANCHEZ: But for what political purpose? That`s what I`m saying.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: — with as far out, with as far out with the fringe as she can, because that`s her base.

(CROSSTALK)

STEVE MCMAHON, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: That`s right. It`s not just her base. It`s the people that are taking over the party. It`s the Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh –

MATTHEWS: You can`t hurt by being friendly with the right.

MCMAHON: –. base of the Republican Party.

Exactly. You cannot be too far right, because especially if you`re thinking about running for president or if you want to have a controversial talk show on FOX, you need to do these things. And they generate headlines. They get people like us talking. And it works for Sarah Palin, who wants to be an entertainer and a provocateur.

I`m not sure it works very well if she wants to be the president of the United States.

MATTHEWS: Do you think that`s a statement you could live with, Leslie, people have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to? Do you like the phraseology there? People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to? Do you like that –

The hypocrisy on display here was astonishing. For weeks, folks like Matthews have been telling the American people that the backers of the Ground Zero mosque have a Constitutional right to build it there, and this supersedes the public’s overwhelming opposition.

By contrast, the conservative position has been to recognize the Constitutionality in play while questioning the wisdom of doing something that would offend so many Americans.

As such, Palin – and Boehner as you’ll see in a bit – were making the exact same argument concerning Jones: he has the right to burn these Korans, but they wish he wouldn’t.

Not only didn’t Matthews see the consistency in these positions, he was the one being inconsistent by now claiming Jones’s Constitutional rights were irrelevant and represented a “soft” position on Palin’s part.

The net result is that the Constitution in Matthews’ mind must only protect those involved with the Ground Zero mosque but not Pastor Jones: 

(CROSSTALK)

SANCHEZ: First off, I`m not going to put Sarah Palin`s words in my mouth. Let`s put it that way.

MATTHEWS: OK. Good.

SANCHEZ: I can speak for myself.

But I will say this much. I think you play too much into this game that Sarah Palin wants you to do, which is — talking from a conservative Republican perspective, I think we were very clear, both bipartisanly, from a bipartisan perspective, of how people felt about how ludicrous his statements were and his actions to be.

MATTHEWS: Whose were?

SANCHEZ: The reverend in this case.

MATTHEWS: Sure.

SANCHEZ: And I think why can`t we talk in solidarity about that?

It`s all this — this ruse that it`s Sarah Palin pulling the strings – -

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: I just want to know — I will go back to my question — why did she throw him the life jacket and say, put this on, tie it to the mosque? Why did she do that? Why did Boehner do that?

Nobody else was doing it in the media. I wasn`t drawing the connection.

Then you’re either an idiot or a liar, Mr. Matthews, for there not only is a connection here, but also people like you and the rest of the media would have totally ignored Jones if the Ground Zero mosque wasn’t currently an issue: 

SANCHEZ: She –

MATTHEWS: These characters were sitting, were on the show right here, talking to me, both these pastors, Sapp and Jones — neither one of them mentioned the mosque. Both long interviews.

I said, is there anyone who could appeal to, we could appeal to you to stop this? Or any — nobody mentioned the mosque until today, after these stories moved by your — people on the far right. Not on the right. People like Boehner, just a Republican golfer.

(LAUGHTER)

SANCHEZ: Well, the tan is important. But to be fair to that point, I think a lot of people were talking about it. If you want to see that`s a lifeline, I think you`re going to see it regardless of anything that I have to say.

MCMAHON: It`s interesting — it`s interesting here, though, if people continue to draw a connection between the actions and the words of John Boehner and Sarah Palin and suggest that somehow the leaders of the Republican Party and the woman who is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president — I mean, that`s why this makes so much news — if there`s some suggestion that the Republican Party is sort of behind this guy, and manipulating this guy, I think it further alienates the Republican Party –

SANCHEZ: Further.

MCMAHON: — from the majority of Americans who feel differently about this.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: There`s a big difference between the difficult question of building a mosque a couple blocks from the World Trade Center, which I`ve always said on this program is a difficult question. I`ve admired Michael Bloomberg for the courageous position he`s taken given the fact of his job up there. But I think there`s two sides of that argument.

Can we agree there`s no two sides to the argument about burning religious books on world television? Can we agree on it?

No, we certainly can’t agree for they both involve folks exercising their Constitutional rights in a fashion that the majority of citizens find offensive. They are indeed the exact same issue, and any suggestion to the contrary demonstrates ignorance, willful dishonesty, or both: 

MCMAHON: Yes. Yes, we can agree.

MATTHEWS: OK. We just got the word that Gates — Secretary Gates did make a call to the reverend to try to smooth this thing out or end this thing. Maybe that was influential.

Here`s John Boehner making the point I was trying to relate to here, conflating — there`s a word I don`t like, but it`s big these days on the right — conflating Koran-burning with the Islamic center near Ground Zero.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), MINORITY LEADER: To Pastor Jones and those who want to build the mosque, just because you have a right to do something in America, does not mean it is the right thing to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Exactly. And this is the same position the Right has taken concerning the Ground Zero mosque. Not surprisingly, Matthews was having none of it: 

MATTHEWS: That was healthy. We call that in the NBA, an assist.

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: That`s called an assist.

SANCHEZ: No, I mean –

MATTHEWS: Or an alley-hoop actually.

SANCHEZ: Wow.

MATTHEWS: Get it near the top of the rim so the other guy can put it in. 

I ask you: do you need a better example of liberal media bias?

Matthews and his colleagues complain for days that Republicans aren’t doing anything to stop Jones from burning Korans on Saturday. Two top GOP figures do, and they’re accused of helping the Pastor.

Makes you want to throw your television set out the window, doesn’t it? 

SOURCE: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/09/10/chris-matthews-accuses-sarah-palin-aiding-and-abetting-koran-burning-pastor#ixzz0z9BKHqnF

Such wishful thinking rarely pays off. History just doesn’t work like that. Lucy will always yank the football away from the Charlie Browns who think history will repeat itself perfectly. Fate, providence — whatever you want to call it — has a better sense of humor than that.

Which is why I’m beginning to think Barack Obama isn’t the next FDR — as so many promised — but the next Hoover.

The creation myth of the modern Democratic party goes something like this: After years of capitalist excess, exemplified by Hoover’s “market fundamentalism,” Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced reasonable and pragmatic reforms that not only conquered the Great Depression but “saved democracy” itself.

Over the last two years, Obama and his defenders have constantly invoked this story to buttress the case for Obama’s “new foundation” — his version of a new New Deal.

Whatever the problems with this story — and there are many — the simple fact is that history has happened. We live with the consequences of the New Deal. Its institutions — Social Security, the FDIC, etc. —are all around us, as are the progeny from the Great Society, another effort to replay the New Deal as if it were a new idea.

On liberals’ own terms, to argue that we need something like another New Deal or Great Society is to argue that these institutions either don’t exist or don’t work. But few, if any, liberals say anything like that. Instead, they change the subject. They talk about the Bush years as if they were a cross between a libertarian fantasy and an anarchist dystopia à la Mad Max.

Here’s Obama in his Cleveland speech Wednesday, describing the philosophy that defined the Bush years: “Cut taxes, especially for millionaires and billionaires. Cut regulations for special interests. Cut trade deals even if they didn’t benefit our workers. Cut back on investments in our people and our future — in education and clean energy, in research and technology. The idea was that if we had blind faith in the market, if we let corporations play by their own rules, if we left everyone else to fend for themselves, America would grow and prosper.”

What movie was he watching? At best this is a Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robot battle between delusion and dishonesty. Rhetorically, Bush never advocated anything like any of this. Indeed, Bush the compassionate conservative described his philosophy thus: “When somebody hurts, government has got to move.” More concretely, under Bush we had massive spending increases on education, alternative energy, the National Institutes of Health, and health care. We saw the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, and the trade deals Bush pushed are now part of the Obama agenda.

But Obama needs to spout such hogwash in order to sell some very old “new” ideas.

It hasn’t worked. Americans understand this isn’t 1932 or 1964. Some even understand that many of our problems — housing? entitlements? — stem from the liberal accomplishments of the 1930s and 1960s. Professional liberals, however, remain in denial, insisting they suffer from a “communications” problem or some such nonsense. 

At best, the Democrats bet badly on the business cycle. They expected the economy to recover quickly, as it usually does, and when it did they would credit their policies. That didn’t happen. The “new foundation” either has hurt the economy or did little to help it. Worse, from the liberal perspective, it further soured voters not just on Democrats but on faith in government generally, which Obama was supposed to restore.

And that’s the funny part. For reasons fair and unfair, the Great Depression discredited laissez-faire economics for a generation or more. Hoover, who was hardly the “market fundamentalist” FDR made him out to be, suffered largely from the (bad) luck of the draw, giving Democrats a chance to argue for a new deal of the cards. For reasons fair and unfair, Obama, who inherited a bad recession and made it worse, every day looks more like a modern-day Hoover, whining about his problems, rather than an FDR cheerily getting things done. Inadequate to the task, Obama is discrediting the statism he was elected to restore.

The punch line? When the economy finally rebounds, it might be just in time for Obama’s replacement to get all the credit.

 SOURCE:  http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/246130/next-hoover-jonah-goldberg

Later, Smith introduced a report by senior White House correspondent Bill Plante: “With unemployment at 9.6% and the midterm elections just two months away, President Obama is out and about this week promoting new ideas to get the economy moving again.” Plante proclaimed: “Pumped up in full campaign mode before a crowd of union members in Milwaukee, Mr. Obama celebrated his administration’s accomplishments and announced a new project to repair the nation’s infrastructure.” A headline on screen read: “Obama’s New Deal; Announces $50 billion Infrastructure Plan.”

Following Plante’s report, Smith spoke with CBS economics and business correspondent Rebecca Jarvis and political analyst John Dickerson about the President’s plans. As Jarvis promoted the idea that more spending would create jobs, Smith asked Dickerson about Republican opposition: “…almost anything that the White House talks about, say over the last couple months or so, has met – had been met with a raspberry, I suppose we should assume this will be met with the same kind of reaction?”

Dickerson had earlier used the “raspberry” image to dismiss GOP criticism as pure politics: “Well, the resounding sound was a huge raspberry from all Republican corners to the President’s proposal. You know, they – it’s almost as if these press releases are pre-written.” In reply to Smith, Dickerson suggested a strategy for Obama: “So then does the President have an issue, can he take it on the stump and say, ‘look, I’m even trying to give Republicans things that they want, that they’ve said they’ve wanted, they’re still saying no,’ and that’s going to be his message for the next two months.”

Smith followed up: “Is there any chance any of this stuff the White House is talking about is going to get any support from Republicans?” Dickerson remarked: “No….in the end, the President’s going to have to try to rally his troops around the idea that the Republicans are really trying to block anything that’s sensible.”

On Sunday’s Face the Nation, Smith filled in for host Bob Schieffer and asked a panel of liberal economists: “was the stimulus big enough?” He also pushed for a “second stimulus,” questioned extending the Bush tax cuts, and proposed the creation of “something like a new WPA” to create jobs.

Here is a full transcript of the September 7 segment:

7:00AM TEASE

HARRY SMITH: Obama’s new plan. The President proposes to spend $50 billion on roads, airports, and railways and offers businesses a $200 billion tax cut. But the GOP says not so fast.

7:06AM SEGMENT

SMITH: Now to the economy and politics. With unemployment at 9.6% and the midterm elections just two months away, President Obama is out and about this week promoting new ideas to get the economy moving again. CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante has the latest on that. Bill, good morning.

BILL PLANTE: Good morning, Harry. The stalled economy has fueled voter discontent and Democrats fears of losing control of Congress. So the President will be on the campaign trail for much of the next two months trying to turn things around.

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Obama's New Deal; Announces $50 billion Infrastructure Plan]

BARACK OBAMA: I am going to keep fighting every single day, every single hour, every single minute, to turn this economy around and put people back to work and renew the American dream. Not just for your family, not just for all our families, but for future generations.

PLANTE: Pumped up in full campaign mode before a crowd of union members in Milwaukee, Mr. Obama celebrated his administration’s accomplishments and announced a new project to repair the nation’s infrastructure. The proposal would rebuild 150,000 miles of roads, construct 4,000 miles of rail, and reconstruct 150 miles of runway as well as modernizing the air traffic control system. Administration officials insist this isn’t another stimulus, but the President says it will be a big boost to the economy.

OBAMA: This will not only create jobs immediately, it’s also going to make our economy hum over the long haul.

PLANTE: House Minority Leader John Boehner shot back in a statement, saying ‘we don’t need more government stimulus spending. We need to end Washington Democrats’ out-of-control spending spree, stop their tax hikes, and create jobs.’ Administration officials propose to pay for the infrastructure rebuilding by eliminating some tax breaks for oil and gas production. And the President will soon propose another tax break for small business. He wants to eliminate taxes on capital investment for the coming year until the end of 2011. Harry.

SMITH: Alright, Bill Plante at the White House this morning, thank you. Here now to talk – take a closer look at the President’s plans are CBS News business and economics correspondent Rebecca Jarvis. And in Washington, CBS News political analyst John Dickerson. Good morning to you both.

REBECCA JARVIS: Good morning.

SMITH: Rebecca, let’s start with you, let’s go through these two plans. The $50 billion, sort of, stimulus junior, as it were, to all of this infrastructure work.

JARVIS: Infrastructure-

SMITH: This is supposed to be kind of a seed, really, for a much larger idea of addressing infrastructure needs across the country.

JARVIS: Absolutely, and well we’ve had these infrastructure needs, obviously, in the very first stimulus, which was about $800 billion, some of the stimulus needs were supposed to be addressed. And if you look at those numbers, that original stimulus dollars, that original 800 billion or so stimulus dollars, that created – according to the Congressional Budget Office, which is a nonpartisan group – that created 1.4 to 3.3 million jobs. So if you think about this infrastructure plan which is $50 billion – that’s the proposal – that, if it’s an apples to apples comparison, it’s a 1/16 of the size of the original plan, could create about 88,000 to 206,000 jobs in a year.

SMITH: That’s not a lot of jobs, although it is being welcomed, politically, in some corners and being shunned by – in other quarters. Let’s get John Dickerson on board here to just talk a little bit about the reaction to this. What was the resounding sound, especially from Republicans?

JOHN DICKERSON: Well, the resounding sound was a huge raspberry from all Republican corners to the President’s proposal. You know, they – it’s almost as if these press releases are pre-written. They see this as a last-minute desperate attempt by the President. They say more big government spending going to balloon the deficit, this was right into their existing playbook.

SMITH: Alright, and let’s talk about this two – this other-

DICKERSON: The $200 billion.

SMITH: Exactly. Which is a whole – kind of putting a different template on the way businesses sort of write down their own investment in their business.

JARVIS: Yeah, as Bill Plante mentioned, it’s an original for two years businesses won’t have to wait to write down their investments in new things. Instead, they’ll get to take off their books, they’ll get to take the deductions in taxes. It’s a $200 billion plan. And some economists estimate it will help grow business investment by 5% to 10%, which could be a boost to some new businesses, as well as new jobs.

SMITH: Alright. And John Dickerson, we haven’t heard so much reaction to that yet, but sort of overall, almost anything that the White House talks about, say over the last couple months or so, has met – had been met with a raspberry, I suppose we should assume this will be met with the same kind of reaction?

DICKERSON: It will be. And the problem is the President’s got to get these things through Congress and particularly in the Senate, that requires Republican votes and his – the President’s allies in the Senate say that just isn’t going to happen. So then does the President have an issue, can he take it on the stump and say, ‘look, I’m even trying to give Republicans things that they want, that they’ve said they’ve wanted, they’re still saying no,’ and that’s going to be his message for the next two months.

SMITH: Because that really ends up being the question. Is there any chance any of this stuff the White House is talking about is going to get any support from Republicans?

DICKERSON: No. And though there may an tiny bit of support for this $30 billion small business bill, because small business is something everybody loves. But in the end, the President’s going to have to try to rally his troops around the idea that the Republicans are really trying to block anything that’s sensible.

SMITH: Yeah, okay. And finally, last but not least, all through this then, the Bush tax cuts has become this sort of mantra of sorts that the Republicans say, ‘do not touch this. Do not touch this.’ What’s the news on that today?

JARVIS: Well, this $200 billion tax credit for businesses throughout the country, some are viewing it as a potential alternative to the Bush tax cuts for the upper earning income earners.

SMITH: Alright, thanks very much, Rebecca Jarivs, John Dickerson. Thank you very much for joining us and your insights this morning.
SOURCE : http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kyle-drennen/2010/09/07/cbss-smith-pressures-gop-sign-obamas-new-deal#ixzz0yrtmqrCB

But no, something more symbolic roiled the body politic — the prospect of a mosque in close proximity to the World Trade Center’s former location. What began as a local zoning matter morphed over the months into a national debate with potential foreign-policy repercussions. Its symbolic quality fit a pattern established in other Western countries. Islamic coverings on females have spurred repeated national debates in France since 1989. The Swiss banned the building of minarets. The murder of Theo van Gogh profoundly affected the Netherlands, as did the publication of Mohammad cartoons in Denmark.

Oddly, only after the Islamic center’s location had generated weeks of controversy did the issue of individuals, organizations, and funding behind the project finally come to the fore — although these obviously have more significance than does location. Personally, I do not object to a truly moderate Muslim institution in proximity to Ground Zero; conversely, I object to an Islamist institution being constructed anywhere. Ironically, building the center in such close proximity to Ground Zero, given the intense emotions it aroused, will likely redound against the long-term interests of Muslims in the United States.

This new emotionalism marks the start of a difficult stage for Islamists in the United States. Although their origins as an organized force go back to the founding of the Muslim Student Association in 1963, they came of age politically in the mid-1990s, when they emerged as a force in U.S. public life.

I was fighting Islamists back then, and things went badly. It was, in practical terms, just Steven Emerson and me versus hundreds of thousands of Islamists. He and I could not find adequate intellectual support, money, media interest, or political backing. Our cause felt quite hopeless.

My lowest point came in 1999, when a retired U.S. career foreign service officer named Richard Curtiss spoke on Capitol Hill about “the potential of the American Muslim community” and compared its advances to Mohammad’s battles in seventh-century Arabia. He flat-out predicted that, just as Mohammad once had prevailed, so too would American Muslims. While Curtiss spoke only about changing policy toward Israel, his themes implied a broader Islamist takeover of the United States. His prediction seemed unarguable.

September 11 provided a wake-up call, ending this sense of hopelessness. Americans reacted badly not just to that day’s horrifying violence but also to the Islamists’ outrageous insistence on blaming the attacks on U.S. foreign policy and, later, the election of Barack Obama, or their blatant denial that the perpetrators were Muslims or of intense Muslim support for the attacks.

American scholars, columnists, bloggers, media personalities, and activists became knowledgeable about Islam, developing into a community, a community that now feels like a movement. The Islamic-center controversy represents its emergence as a political force, offering an angry, potent reaction inconceivable just a decade earlier.

The energetic push-back of recent months finds me partially elated: Those who reject Islamism and all its works now constitute a majority and are on the march. For the first time in fifteen years, I feel I may be on the winning team.

But I have one concern: the team’s increasing anti-Islamic tone. Misled by the Islamists’ insistence that there can be no such thing as “moderate Islam,” my allies often fail to distinguish between Islam (a faith) and Islamism (a radical utopian ideology aiming to implement Islamic laws in their totality). This amounts to not just an intellectual error but a policy dead end. Targeting all Muslims is contrary to basic Western notions, lumps friends with foes, and ignores the inescapable fact that Muslims alone can offer an antidote to Islamism. As I often note, radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam is the solution.

Once this lesson is learned, the new energy will bring the defeat of Islamism dimly into sight.

SOURCE:  http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/245737/americans-wake-islamism-daniel-pipes

At the same time, the Gray Lady, clearly not concerned about offending its dwindling number of patrons, chose to insult portions of its remaining readership with the following editorial:

It has always been a myth that New York City, in all its dizzying globalness, is a utopia of humanistic harmony. The city has a bloody history of ethnic and class strife. [...]

The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island are two pinnacles of American openness to the outsider. New Yorkers like to think they are a perfect fit with their city.

Tolerance, however, isn’t the same as understanding, so it is appalling to see New Yorkers who could lead us all away from mosque madness, who should know better, playing to people’s worst instincts.

That includes Carl Paladino and Rick Lazio, Republicans running for governor who have disgraced their state with histrionics about the mosque being a terrorist triumph. And Rudolph Giuliani, who cloaks his opposition to the mosque as “sensitivity” to 9/11 families without acknowledging that this conflates all prayerful Muslims with terrorists, a despicable conclusion. [...]

New Yorkers, like other Americans, have a way to go.

That’s a heckuva way to treat your patrons as well as prospective customers.

Is it any wonder this company’s stock is trading close to a 26-year low?

Source: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/09/03/nyt-calls-new-yorkers-appalling-opposing-ground-zero-mosque#ixzz0yUPdEqkR

A remarkably bold charge for an active military officer. It stops just short of suggesting aiding and abetting the enemy. Yet the observation is obvious: It is surely harder to prevail in a war that hinges on the allegiance of the locals when they hear the U.S. president talk of beginning a withdrawal that will ultimately leave them to the mercies of the Taliban.

How did Obama come to this decision? “Our Afghan policy was focused as much as anything on domestic politics,” an Obama adviser at the time told Peter Baker of the New York Times. “He would not risk losing the moderate to centrist Democrats in the middle of health insurance reform and he viewed that legislation as the make-or-break legislation for his administration.”

If this is true, then Obama’s military leadership can only be called scandalous. During the past week, 22 Americans were killed over a four-day period in Afghanistan. This is not a place about which decisions should be made in order to placate congressmen, pass health-care reform, and thereby maintain a president’s political standing. This is a place about which a president should make decisions to best succeed in the military mission he himself has set out.

But Obama sees his wartime duties as a threat to his domestic agenda. These wars are a distraction, unwanted interference with his true vocation — transforming America.

Such an impression could only have been reinforced when, given the opportunity in his Oval Office address this week to dispel the widespread perception in Afghanistan that America is leaving, Obama doubled down on his ambivalence. After giving a nod to the pace of troop reductions being conditions-based, he declared with his characteristic “but make no mistake” that “this transition will begin — because open-ended war serves neither our interests nor the Afghan people’s.”

These are the words of a man who wants out. Most emphatically on Iraq, where from the beginning Obama has made clear that his objective is simply ending combat operations by an arbitrary deadline — despite the fact that a new government has not been formed and all our hard-won success hangs in the balance — in order to address the more paramount concern: keeping a campaign promise. Time to “turn the page” and turn America elsewhere.

At first you’d think that turning is to Afghanistan. But Obama added nothing to his previously stated Afghan policy while emphatically reiterating July 2011 as the beginning of the end, or more diplomatically, of the “transition.”

Well then, at least you’d then expect some vision of his larger foreign policy. After all, this was his first Oval Office address on the subject. What is the meaning, if any, of the Iraq and Afghan wars? And what of the clouds that are forming beyond those theaters: the drone-war escalation in Pakistan, the rise of al-Qaeda in Yemen, the danger of Somalia falling to al-Shabaab, and the threat of renewed civil war in Islamist Sudan as a referendum on independence for southern Christians and animists approaches?

This was the stage for Obama to explain what follows the now-abolished Global War on Terror. Where does America stand on the spreading threats to stability, decency, and U.S. interests from the Horn of Africa to the Hindu Kush?

On this, not a word. Instead, Obama made a strange and clumsy segue into a pep talk on the economy. Rebuilding it, he declared, “must be our central mission as a people, and my central responsibility as president.” This in a speech ostensibly about the two wars he is directing. He could not have made more clear where his priorities lie, and how much he sees foreign policy — war policy — as subordinate to his domestic ambitions.

Unfortunately, what for Obama is a distraction is life or death for U.S. troops now on patrol in Kandahar province. Some presidents may not like being wartime leaders. But they don’t get to decide. History does. Obama needs to accept the role. It’s not just the U.S. military, as Baker reports, that is “worried he is not fully invested in the cause.” Our allies, too, are experiencing doubt. And our enemies are drawing sustenance.

SOURCE:  http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/245532/our-distracted-commander-chief-charles-krauthammer

To have in this speech, as combat operations are ending, to have…the President not only not addressing the circumstances in which we went to war, but these kind words for President Bush, describing his “commitment to our security” despite the recklessness with which President Bush discarded that national security in favor of this war of choice, which only diminished our security, and is responsible, probably, for the Afghanistan war still going on today, for the deaths of people who have died in Afghanistan after the time after which that war would have ended had we not gone to Iraq — not to mention all of the people who died in Iraq.

After finally taking a breath, she continued:

To talk about him having a demonstrated “commitment to our security,” having started this war on the terms on which he started it, I mean, it’s beyond restraint from President Obama and anybody in the pro-Iraq war, pro-Bush camp who doesn’t feel like they’ve been given the greatest political present they never deserved, was not listening to this speech.

From MSNBC’s Countdown at about 8:24 PM EDT, just after President Obama completed his August 31 speech carried by all the networks:

KEITH OLBERMANN: That one sentence in there, “It’s well known,” referring to President Bush, “that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset, yet no one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops or his love of country and commitment to our security.” There are people who would support President Obama who would howl at hearing that said aloud more than once. Once again, contextualize this in terms of the entire administration.

RACHEL MADDOW: Yeah, I’m, I think we shouldn’t get past how remarkable it is, how much the proponents of the Iraq war are getting off easy here. I mean, we’ve got Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton and these guys, like out now offering their suggestions on what ought to happen in Iraq next. Paul Wolfowitz, who said that the war would pay for itself, that we wouldn’t have to spend any money there.

And to have in this speech, as combat operations are ending, to have – as you point out Keith – the President not only not addressing the circumstances in which we went to war, but these kind words for President Bush, describing his “commitment to our security” despite the recklessness with which President Bush discarded that national security in favor of this war of choice, which only diminished our security, and is responsible, probably, for the Afghanistan war still going on today, for the deaths of people who have died in Afghanistan after the time after which that war would have ended had we not gone to Iraq — not to mention all of the people who died in Iraq.

To talk about him having a demonstrated “commitment to our security,” having started this war on the terms on which he started it, I mean, it’s beyond restraint from President Obama and anybody in the pro-Iraq war, pro-Bush camp who doesn’t feel like they’ve been given the greatest political present they never deserved, was not listening to this speech.

OLBERMANN: They won’t.

Source:  http://www.mrc.org/biasalert/2010/20100901024351.aspx

Case in point: Last week, Obama’s State Department handed in America’s first-ever report to the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights in conjunction with something called the “Universal Periodic Review.” In short, the 29-page document is a self-aggrandizing report card touting the administration’s far-left domestic and foreign-policy initiatives for the world’s approval.

The report boasts of racial and gender bean-counting in the executive branch; Justice Department outreach to Muslim grievance groups opposed to post-9/11 security measures; teachers’ union payoffs in the federal stimulus law; continuing commitment to closing the Gitmo detention facility for enemy combatants; and the illusory lifesaving effects of Obamacare on minorities through “expanding community health centers” (which have yet to be built, not that it matters in our Nobel Peace Prize–winning president’s age of post-achievement).

The report also includes a section on “values and immigration,” which essentially singles out Arizona’s immigration-enforcement law as a human-rights deficiency “that is being addressed in a court action.”

In response, Arizona governor Jan Brewer rightly blasted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration for succumbing to “internationalism run amok.” Brewer pointed out in a letter to Clinton, “Human rights as guaranteed by the United States and Arizona Constitutions are expressly protected in S.B. 1070 and defended vigorously by my Administration. In fact, the Department of Justice has correctly not included these so-called ‘human rights’ issues in the current litigation against the State of Arizona.” Somehow, that inconvenient detail escaped the Foggy Bottom bureaucrats’ notice.

No one should be surprised, of course, that the Department of Blame America First is prostrating itself before the likes of repressive U.N. Human Rights Council members Libya, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and China. No one should be surprised that Obama’s globalist panderers couldn’t simply keep their mouths shut and refrain from trashing Americans with whom they disagree. In May, you’ll recall, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner preemptively trashed our country’s human-rights record to Chinese government officials and humiliated Arizonans — and all Americans — who support states’ rights to protect their borders and enhance their security through strict immigration enforcement. An obsequious Posner called S.B. 1070 “a troubling trend in our society” in his bow-and-scrape conversations with the ChiComs.

The inclusion of Arizona in a politically correct catalogue of human rights and wrongs is more than “downright offensive,” as Brewer put it. It’s a national travesty. In the very same Obama administration document, the State Department praises the administration for its “robust protections for freedom of expression.” The report notes sanctimoniously: “As a general matter, the government does not punish or penalize those who peacefully express their views in the public sphere, even when those views are critical of the government. Indeed, dissent is a valuable and valued part of our politics.”

Yeah? Tell that to the Democratic members of Congress leading the punitive economic boycott and political demonization of Arizona. Or to Attorney General Eric Holder, who rushed to attack S.B. 1070 before he had even read it. Fresh off this U.N. mess, Holder’s Social Justice Department has launched yet another vendetta against Arizona. On Monday, the DOJ filed suit against Phoenix-area community colleges because they imposed strict citizenship screening of potential employees.

As Obama throws America under the bus for the cause of open borders, the shady U.N. human-rights police must be laughing their jackboots off.

SOURCE:  http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/245315/arizona-vs-u-n-human-rights-police-michelle-malkin

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the United States will run up more than $1 trillion in debt next year as well, and for years to come. And with entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare facing more than $100 trillion in future unfunded liabilities, we may look back on this level of debt as representing the “good old days.”

Yet, as frightening as those numbers are, focusing on the deficit and debt is to confuse the symptom with the disease. As Milton Friedman often explained, the real issue is not how you pay for government spending — debt or taxes — but the spending itself. In other words: Don’t just look at the deficit, look at why we have a deficit. And the reason we have a deficit is pretty simple: Government spends too much.

Traditionally, federal spending has run around 21 percent of GDP. But George W. Bush and (even more dramatically) Barack Obama have now driven federal spending to more than 25 percent of GDP. And as the old joke goes, that’s the good news. As the full force of entitlement programs kicks in, the federal government will consume more than 40 percent of GDP by the middle of the century. That doesn’t even begin to count state and local-government spending.

As any doctor knows, getting the diagnosis wrong leads to the wrong treatment. Thus Democrats pose as deficit hawks by calling for more taxes. But think about how high taxes would have to be raised to pay for all the government spending to come. Federal taxes have traditionally run at around 18 percent of GDP. Currently, they are down somewhat, around 15 percent of GDP, mostly as a result of the recession. Would we really be better off if, in 2050, federal spending reached 40 percent of GDP but we doubled taxes to pay for it? There would at least theoretically be no deficit, but we would be both poorer and less free.

Of course it is almost as silly for Republicans to argue that the answer is simply to cut taxes in order to grow our way out of the problem. There are many good reasons to cut taxes — not the least of which is that the money really is ours — but too many Republicans argue that tax cuts would generate so much additional revenue that spending cuts aren’t necessary. They harken back to Jude Wanniski’s “Two Santa Claus Theory,” which holds that “if the Democrats are going to play Santa Claus by promoting more spending, the Republicans can never beat them by promoting less spending. They have to promise tax cuts in order to grow the economy — not to ‘starve the government of revenue.’”

Yes, tax cuts — at least some types of tax cuts — will stimulate economic growth. But no amount of economic growth is going to enable us to afford the levels of spending to come. And even if it did, would that be a good thing? Do we want that big a government, even if we could pay for it?

The fact is, there is no Santa Claus — not a Democratic spending one, and not a Republican tax-cutting one. Spending is going to have to be cut — really cut: The old “fraud, waste, and abuse” line is not going to do it.   

Cutting spending is never easy politically. In an election season like this one, being honest about spending is liable to get you labeled as an “extremist.” But it is time for someone to step up and show the courage to tell the American people that Santa Claus isn’t coming to town.   

 SOURCE:  http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/244616/deficit-symptom-spending-disease-michael-tanner

On the Aug. 24 broadcast of his show “Countdown,” Olbermann demonstrated just how sensible the so-called “professional left” can be when criticizing things they perceive to be antithetical to their world view. At the top of his “Worst Persons in the World” segment, viewers were treated to a bonus attack on Fox News, who Olbermann mockingly tried to portray as a sponsor of the show’s segment.

“Get out your pitchforks and torches — time for tonight’s worst persons in the world brought to you by Fox News Channel: Official propaganda arm of Glenn Beck’s ‘I Have a Scheme’ speech, book tour rollout and 100 percent guaranteed in advance miracle. Fabricating and promoting events and then covering them as if they were news since 1996,” Olbermann said. “I wish there was a joke here. There isn’t. Fox News Channel: Making [expletive] up since 1996.”

Fox News regularly creams MSNBC in the ratings compiled by Nielsen Media Research, including the 8 p.m. Eastern Time slot, where Olbermann’s show is a distant second place to FNC’s “The O’Reilly Factor.” Perhaps that is the source of the “Countdown” host’s bitterness.

SOURCE:  http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeff-poor/2010/08/24/olbermann-attacks-higher-rated-competition-fox-news-channel-making-explet