#OWS Has Worn Out Its Welcome

I'm really unsure how to break the news to them, but a LOT of Americans have had their fill of the #OWS protestors. While I don't condone the roughness of police during the expulsion of protestors from public parks, I think that the fact that people living around, or traveling through, these parks appreciate their absence is very telling. The American people may agree that something should be done, but obnoxious finger wiggling and endless parroting of every word the speaker says is simply not endearing.

Another gripe of mine is that some of these people have the gall to compare themselves to the civil rights movement of the 1960's. They're really not that bad off, many of them show up with laptops, iPads, and smartphones to be "warriors" against injustice.

My point, and plea to occupiers: America would rather find a less hippie, less smelly, more sanitary way to promote change. Please go home and have a shower.

I'm back.

Wow, I have left this blog untouched for nearly a year... I guess it's just as well, I didn't really have that much to say. I think part of the reason I left it is that I had spent a fairly significant amount of time ranting about liberal politics, and then suddenly realized one day that I dislike ALL politics that are going on in this country at the moment. So I decided to just post funny stuff, and after a while even that got old, so I started a new blog using another service, for another reason. I realized that some of the stuff I was posting on that blog is probably better suited to the tone of this blog, or at least to change the tone of the blog to something more suited to my personality.

So there it is, I have come back to this blog, we'll see how it goes.

Monty Python Win!

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Classic...

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Hooray for the Simpsons!!!

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LOVE IT!!!! I want one!

Kangaroo fail...

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Love it!

Kid chased by rooster

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Epic...

A temporary change in direction...

So, for most of the summer I wrote about political happenings. Well, I am a music major, and with the beginning of the semester, I found myself with little time to keep up on political goings on. However, finding funny things online is one of the few things I can do for a little sanity break from practicing and classes, so I share them with the world...

Priceless...

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Dolphins...

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Epic Fail!

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Band Geek Win!

LOVE it!

America, you gotta have our backs...

A group of Iraq and Afghan war vets have joined those speaking out against the recent onslaught of anti-Muslim rhetoric. The Huffington Post published their letter in the following article:


The push by some in the media against rising anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States gained valuable voices of support over the weekend -- and now joining that chorus are veterans who fought alongside U.S. servicemembers of Islamic faith in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A small but growing group of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have signed onto an open letter, provided exclusively to the Huffington Post, which calls on the American public to respect "the values we risked our lives to protect" and to avoid endangering the mission -- and safety -- of U.S. forces in the Mideast. Like Gen. David Petraeus, the veterans warn that U.S. troops will face blowback from demonstrated intolerance for Muslims at home.

"America, you gotta have our back," reads the letter, composed by signatories Roy Scranton, Philip Klay and Perry O'Brien. "Those who would vilify and target Muslims on grounds of their religious belief not only show a deep disrespect for American values, but put American lives at risk. It's easy to burn a Koran when you won't feel the heat."

O'Brien told HuffPost that he, Scranton and Klay, all of whom are now writers living in New York City, wrote the letter together out of mutual frustration with the uptick in anti-Muslim rhetoric and violence, then learned that "many of our buddies felt the same way."

They're not alone. A Quinnipiac poll released Monday found that 50 percent of respondents said "mainstream Islam" is a peaceful religion, while only 27 percent said it encourages violence toward non-Muslims. And though the Park51 project -- the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" -- is still opposed more than two-to-one by the general populace surveyed by Quinnipiac, support for the project is growing in New York itself.

The "frenzy" whipped up in response to Park51 "was one of the key events that drove us to write the letter," O'Brien wrote in a follow-up email, along with the Muslim cab driver stabbing late last month. "I think we all feel that this city has become the center of much of this renewed intolerance, at least in the popular imagination," he wrote. "As vets living in New York, we wanted to speak on behalf of friends currently deployed and remind people that hysterical culture wars have very real, and very dangerous impact for people fighting real wars."

Read the full letter:

As veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have watched with increasing alarm the rise of anti-Islamic rhetoric within the U.S. We've seen attacks on Muslim citizens, intolerance toward religious expression, and even threats of book burning. All this goes against the values we risked our lives to protect.

We have served beside Muslim soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen, as well Muslim translators, who risked their own lives and the lives of their families to help us. For the servicemembers currently deployed, the success of their mission and the safety of their lives depends on a basic respect for, and interaction with, Islamic culture.

Those who would vilify and target Muslims on grounds of their religious belief not only show a deep disrespect for American values, but put American lives at risk. It's easy to burn a Koran when you won't feel the heat.

We speak as infantrymen, truck drivers, medics, artillerymen, supply sergeants, and civil and public affairs officers, professions whose success depends on good relations with a deeply religious Muslim population. That population sees the American flag we wear on our uniform and judges us, not only by our actions but on the values our citizens uphold. We must be able to point back home to the values we represent. Chief among those values is our courage as a nation to peacefully and openly engage with differences of culture and religion.

What is a squad leader in Kandahar supposed to say to an Afghan woman who asks him why we want to burn her holy book?

When citizens here participate in hateful rhetoric and intolerance toward Muslims, it leaves soldiers over there exposed.

America, you gotta have our back.

Roy Scranton, US Army Artillery, Iraq
Philip Klay, USMC Public Affairs Officer, Iraq
Perry O'Brien, US Army Medic (Airborne), Afghanistan
James Redden Jr., USAR Journalist, Iraq
Joshua Casteel, US Army Linguist, Iraq
Logan Mehl-Laituri, US Army Forward Observer, Iraq
Hart Viges, Army, Infantry (Airborne), Iraq
Jason M Wallace, US Air Force Maintenance, Kuwait
Chantelle Bateman, USMC Supply, Iraq
Geoffrey Millard, US Army Infantry, Iraq
Nicholas Przybyla, US Navy Cameraman, Pakistan Coast
John McClelland, US Army Medic (Ranger), Afghanistan and Iraq
Andrew Johnson, US Army Radar Technician, Iraq
Daniel Paulsen, US Army Medic (Airborne), Afghanistan
Fernando Braga, US Army Supply, Iraq
Maggie Martin, US Army Signal, Iraq
Adam Kokesh, USMC Civil Affairs, Iraq
Lisa Zepeda, US Army Lab Technician, Iraq
Brian Turner, US Army Infantry, Iraq
Matt Gallagher, US Army Cavalry Officer, Iraq
Michael Anthony Ruehrwein, US Army OR Tech, Iraq
Erika Sjolander, US Army Supply, Iraq
Bryan Reinholdt, US Army Apache Maintenance, Iraq
Jason Chambers, US Air Force Air Freight Specialist, Iraq
Joe Wheeler, US Army Surgical Assistant, Iraq
Ash Woolson, US Army Combat Engineer, Iraq
Chris Hellie, US Army Cavalry Officer, Iraq
Sara Beining, US Army Intelligence Analyst, Iraq
Helen Gerhardt, US Army Transport, Iraq
Garett Reppenhagen, US Army Cavalry Scout, Iraq

Thanks to these brave men and women for their service, and for being a voice of reason to our nation.

Football Season!!!!!

I just have to throw out there that I am super excited for football season to start, and fantasy football season (I know, I got in late after the preseason, that always seems to happen). I just had the thought to put this on my blog because on one of the fantasy football sites I saw a Sharron Angle advertisement, which made me laugh a bit too. I had to wonder about that strategy... Not that I like Harry Reid, I hate his politics with a passion, but to spend money to have your add on a fantasy football site? I dunno...

The negotiations start with something they can both agree on...

A little dose of hard reality...

I found this on Pundit Kitchen:


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I just have to say that this is so disgustingly true...

Back at it...

Here I am, back at it after a week off for school stuff... I haven't had the time to catch up on the news, but this should give you a laugh...

Reality or Rhetoric? A little humor

From the same episode of The Daily Show that I posted earlier: Team Mohammed vs. Team Jesus

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Extremist Makeover - Team Mohammed vs. Team Jesus
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Reality or Rhetoric? Part III

I've been thinking a LOT lately about all the buzz surrounding the "Ground Zero Mosque" and it's developers; it's almost a bit depressing, watching our people show the world that we really haven't moved past the bigotry, we've just changed targets. I know, there are some radicals out there who orchestrated terrorist attacks, if someone brings it up one more time I might just be sick. I know, we are fighting a war against the fundamentalist Taliban, I know that there are Muslims out there that commit human rights violations; there are Christians who do bad things too. What it ultimately comes down to, for me, is this: the developers of this community center, not mosque, community center, don't need our approval to build. They don't need our permission, they've used our own system to put themselves in a position to build. We're wasting breath over this, spewing hateful words, accusing peaceful people of harboring terrorists, it's McCarthyism all over, except this time the enemy isn't Communism, it's Islam. When will we accept that we can't change it? When are we going to let go of the anger, or at least learn to show it in a more appropriate, less frenzied manner? When are we going to realize that Islam isn't the enemy, extremists using Islam as propaganda are. Destroy Islam, the radicals will find another way, another form of propaganda. This isn't something that's going to go away, but we can differentiate between radicals and people who are getting a bad name because of them.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Extremist Makeover - Homeland Edition
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Reality or Rhetoric? Part II

By MAGGIE HABERMAN & BEN SMITH | 8/18/10 7:11 PM EDT Updated: 8/18/10 9:35 PM EDT

When President Barack Obama turned the battle over a planned New York Islamic center into a national debate over religious freedom, he unwittingly allied himself and his party with an ill-planned, long-shot development project described by one of its most prominent allies as “amateur hour.”

The efforts to launch the $100 million Cordoba House (now dubbed Park51) two blocks north of the World Trade Center site have been an uphill battle from the start, and not just because of controversy. And even as the “Ground Zero Mosque” emerges as a hotly debated national symbol, New York government officials and real estate insiders are privately questioning whether the project has much chance of coming to fruition.

The Cordoba Initiative hasn’t begun fundraising yet for its $100 million goal. The group’s latest fundraising report with the State Attorney General’s office, from 2008, shows exactly $18,255 – not enough even for a down payment on the half of the site the group has yet to purchase. 

The group also lacks even the most basic real estate essentials: no blueprint, architect, lobbyist or engineer — and now operates amid crushing negative publicity. The developers didn't line up advance support for the project from other religious leaders in the city, who could have risen to their defense with the press. 

The group’s spokesman, Oz Sultan, wouldn’t rule out developing the site with foreign money in an interview with POLITICO – but said the project’s goal is to rely on domestic funds. Currently, they have none of either.

“They are in the process of hiring an architect — but here’s the thing, you’re not going to get the architect or the engineer because they don’t want to be involved in this,” Sultan, the new media consultant hired to handle some of the project’s imaging — mostly via Twitter — told POLITICO.

For all its problems, the project does have a solid chance of accomplishing one thing: further embarrassing the president.

But to veterans of New York real estate wars, Park51 provides an object lesson in how not to handle development politics in a city in which, even under the mildest of conditions, construction projects are fraught with potential peril.

Weeks into the controversy, Sultan told POLITICO the project's developers are hoping to get their "talking points" together.

"Give us a little time," he pleaded.

“They could have obviously done a lot better in explaining who they are if they really wanted to get approval,” said publicist Ken Sunshine, a veteran of New York’s development wars. “There’s a real question as to whether there's money behind this."

“As I understand it there’s no money there,” said another prominent business official.

A prominent supporter of the project was blunt: “This is amateur hour,” he said.

“That’s why the idea that this is some big conspiracy is so silly,” said the supporter. “Yes, you could say this is not a well-oiled machine.” 

There is, in fact, a textbook for high-profile New York developments, even less risky ones – and the effort by Park51, whose messaging has relied almost entirely on Sultan’s often-snarky Twitter feed, isn’t it.

“They needed to talk to all the right people and they never did. That's a normal part of building any building in Manhattan,” said George Arzt, a longtime public relations man in New York who was Mayor Ed Koch’s press secretary

Normally what they would have done would be to get the architect, the PR, the government operation, community outreach all together in a team,” said Arzt. “They would have reached out to elected officials and the community to tell them what they’re doing. Then they would have had an idea about how much resistance they were getting and what they needed to do.”

Sultan said the project is now in the phase of trying to engage with its critics to answer questions. Yet while he joined just five weeks ago, he wasn’t familiar with basic history POLITICO tried to ascertain.

You’d have to talk to Sharif,” he said of the developer, Sharif El-Gamal, who has refused repeated requests for comment from POLITICO.

El-Gamal and the project’s religious anchor, Imam Feisal Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, have at times offered conflicting information. They don’t have a single person handling their message, and are often setting up their own interviews. Khan, a Sufi who serves on an informal advisory group for the official 9/11 Memorial, casually mentioned to Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a Ramadan event in September 2009 her embryonic dream of the Islamic center downtown, but that was the extent of outreach to City Hall. The Imam is now traveling in Malaysia, and unreachable.

In an interview with the New York Observer published today, El-Gamal told the weekly of the former Burlington Coat Factory, which was damaged in the attack, "I never wanted anything so badly, and it took me four years to buy it." He did so after several aborted attempts in July 2009 for nearly $5 million, a pot of money whose source critics question.

The American Society for Muslim Advancement, another nonprofit founded by the imam involved in Cordoba House, reportedly has assets of less than $1 million.

In liberal New York, the group appears to have reached out to none of the progressive religious groups who would be natural allies, many of whom now support the project, who could have been plausible surrogates to speak to their intentions amid backlash questioning how moderate the Cordoba planners are. Imam Rauf, for instance, sits on the board of the liberal Interfaith Center – but even his fellow board members learned of the project from the New York Times, said the Rev. Chloe Breyer, its executive director.

“They were taken unaware by the response and whether you fault them for it or whether you fault just a rapidly changing and more polarized political environment than anyone expected I don’t think I can answer that,” said Breyer, who backs the project.

Other liberal clerics who might be natural allies told POLITICO they’d heard nothing of the project in advance.

The group also botched its outreach to the families of victims of 9/11, who continue to hold enormous symbolic sway over Ground Zero.

The families Cordoba engaged in advance appear to have been members of "9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows," a left-leaning, anti-war segment that has tense relations with other, larger family organizations.

The Cordoba Initiative’s entire political outreach, meanwhile, appears to have been a call to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer earlier this year, who suggested they visit Community Board 1 merely to measure support. The step was unnecessary – they can build on the site as of right – and was, in retrospect, a mistake.

The hearing gave the impression nationally that there was some kind of government approval required, when in fact it wasn’t the case. A subsequent New York City Landmarks Commission hearing was forced by opponents trying to stop it.

The plan received support from a Community Board subcommittee, but the chair of the board, Julie Menin, advised El-Gamal to hold a larger town hall forum, where nuances could be addressed and broader groups heard from.

He never did.

“If they would have done the town hall from the get-go you would have at least had a real opportunity to get in front of it and explain what they were trying to do and address head-on the misinformation,” she said.

At one of the meetings, the word “mosque” was used, and that gave a hook to the project’s deepest objectors.

It took off in the right-wing blogosphere and in the tabloids, and questions were raised about Rauf’s political beliefs and whether he renounces terror groups like Hamas.

Sultan’s @park51 Twitter feed also drew criticism when it joked in one tweet that an Israeli newspaper would be better off telling Yiddish fables, and in another that a critic who identified himself as Amish should have gone back to churning butter. Both reflected more a snarky New York web sensibility than a dour Islamist threat, but the former produced an apology and a fired intern.

“They can threaten to kill us, you can call us every single nasty name in the book but we can’t have a little fun with it?” complained Sultan.

In printed interviews, El-Gamal has expressed frustration with critics, yet he has, based on behavior, been unwilling to engage in responding at the level the project now requires, including to bat back misperceptions that are shaping national public opinion.

A major piece of misinformation is the idea that government has a role in stopping the center, which is patterned on the $85 million Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side.

The project is a completely as-of-right project, meaning it requires no governmental approvals.

“The mosque has no money, the politicians have no money, the politicians have no say about the money because it's a charitable institution,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic strategist who has long observed New York political footballs, who accurately noted that no elected official will give this group money going forward because the outpouring of rage would be overwhelming.

And while New York’s weathered development machine tends to keep its eye on the ball, Sultan’s goals seem almost abstract.

“Part of this is engagement, part of this is building a basement by which we build a community,” he said. “If you build moderate Muslim communities that’s what’s going to fight extremism.”

I saw this in the Politico iPhone app, and thought it was worth sharing. It really makes me wonder what the big deal is If it is a long shot, why are people worried in the first place? It just makes me wonder yet again if people's fear is grounded in reality or rhetoric?

Continu