From Jon Stewart to Sarah Palin there is the lingering question… What does President Obama really think about the mislabelled “Ground Zero Mosque”.
On Friday, the President said 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.”
That’s easy enough for even the simplest mind to understand, and she did, but the next day when the President said
My intention was to simply let people know what I thought. Which was that in this country we treat everybody equally, in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion. I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there.
I was commenting very specificly on the right that people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country’s about. And I think its very important that as difficult as some of these issues are, that we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are all about
Simple minds like Palin’s imploded. If it was just hers and Fox Nation who all of a sudden had the look of a hog reading a wristwatch, I wouldn’t have said a word. I don’t expect them to understand any multi-syllabic response that doesn’t include waving some kind of pitch-fork at a new minority group they hate. But, it wasn’t just those of a simpler intellect that somehow got confused with the two comments, David Morey vice chairman of the Core Strategy Group, who provided communications advice to Obama’s 2008 campaign, said “The danger here is an incoherent presidency,”. The Daily Show ran a skit on it. Politico had an article titled “Obama, the one-term president” that said
Honest to goodness, the man just does not get it. He might be forced to pull a Palin and resign before his first term is over. He could go off and write his memoirs and build his presidential library. (Both would be half-size, of course.)
Really? This is his ‘Palin sees Russia from her house’ moment?
WTF?
To borrow a line from Aliens… Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?
President Obama looked around all last week and saw the country he is the leader of having apoplectic fits over a misnamed “Mosque” being built near ‘Ground Zero’. He looked around and saw GOP right wingers calling for an end of building permits, not just around New York city, but around the entire country. The President looked around and saw other states weighing in on banning mosques from being built, and my own states ‘burn the koran’ day and he said ENOUGH ALREADY!
Thank God he did, because the week leading up to his comment the narrative was ‘let’s ban a religion from being able to build their house of worship’. The right-wing-uber-fucks were chanting and spewing how this extremist can’t build his terrorist recruiting center mosque, and a candidate is even running on a promise to stop this mosque from being built if he gets elected. Their narrative was simple, we are strict constitutionalists only when it suits us, when it comes to brown people we want them to have separate rights and laws. Repeal the 14th amendment and only allow ‘our’ churches and ban ‘theirs’. That’s the road this country was headed down until President Obama weighed in on the matter.
There is no ‘message problem’ like it’s been implied here. The message is simple and easy. It’s not anyone this high in government’s place to say whether a church should or should not be built. It could be seen as influencing an outcome. Harry Reid was wrong to offer his opinion on the matter the way he did. The only answer to expect from this President or anyone else in government is simply this. Our constitution allows it’s citizens the freedom of religion, the freedom to pray to the God of their choosing. It allows houses of worship to be built without interference from the government. If you want to build a church worshiping space aliens, our constitution allows that. If you want to build a mosque to worship Allah, our constitution allows that. Unless we are going to stop allowing catholic churches to be built next to schools, then we really have no right to stop a mosque from being built in the same zip code as the 9/11 attacks. The President’s message was crystal clear, it’s not up to him to say whether or not it should be built, it’s only his job to say that it can be built, and until he made that distinction the narrative out there was demanding that the 1st amendment be nullified when it comes to Muslims and their rights. If you don’t get what the President was saying and why? Then maybe you should look at the idiocy in yourself instead of blaming him for your confusion. For him to weigh in on the ’should/shouldn’t’ question, puts him on a ‘false’ side. Just ask Harry Reid, now that he weighed in and said it’s lawful to build but they shouldn’t, he’s considered in the crowd that opposes the mosque. Nice work Harry, you’ve joined the ranks of the political opportunist Newt Gingrich who considers all Muslims the same like all Nazi’s are the same. Who equates the building of a mosque to the holocaust! Yes, brilliant move on your part.
and to Sister Sarah, who said
“Mr. President, should they or should they not build a mosque steps away from where radical Islamists killed 3000 people? Please tell us your position. We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they? And, no, this is not above your pay grade. If those who wish to build this Ground Zero mosque are sincerely interested in encouraging positive “cross-cultural engagement”
Darling, it’s not his job to say whether or not he thinks a house of worship should be built, it’s only his job to remind those who wish to impede on the religious freedom of this country. The opinions of whether it should be built or not, are left to the idiots commentators who couldn’t make it in politics. See, when you become President, you can’t just ‘tweet’ your responses and opinions on every subject and you can’t just claim the media twisted your words when the curtain of your idiocy is pulled back to reveal an empty mini-skirt.When you become President, every utterance from your lips is chewed and re-chewed down to a microscopic level, so you learn to give generalized answers on most non-essential issues. Because if you were to weigh in and give a personal answer like, I don’t know, you thought the police acted stupidly on some random matter, then the same people screaming at you now for giving a generalized and non-partsian answer will have seizures because you gave a direct personal opinion on an issue.
The failure here isn’t Obama’s ability to communicate, it’s your ability to understand.
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