The New York Times did an editorial essentially thanking city officials for unanimously voting to allow a mosque and Islamic community center to be built two blocks from the WTC site, for having done so they have upheld the highest aspirations and values of this country.

That’s all well and good, but what gets me is the sheer unbridled vehemence of those who would deny such – from Republican leaders across the country to the very commentators to that editorial, all of whom repeat a mantra as ugly, hateful and bigoted as it sounds: “The terrorists were Muslim and the mosque is a purposeful statement to the victims of September 11th of that victory of Islam over America, and to spread their cult in this nation.”

The sheer blinded arrogance and hatred of that statement is mind-blowing in this day and age. To list the lack of insight:

• Muslims died along with everybody else during September 11th; New York City is a polyglot city.
• The Muslim community of New York City is no more tied to Islamist terrorists than the Christian community of New York City is tied to the neo-Nazi movement.
• Al Qaeda terrorists are extremists first and Muslims second. If we are to indict Islam as a whole on the basis of these extremists, then we must indict Judaism for Israel’s transgressions, and Christianity for– where to begin? I know:
• If we cannot let a mosque be built near Ground Zero, let’s not allow Catholic churches near schools or playgrounds.
• If we cannot let a mosque be built near Ground Zero, let’s not allow Baptist churches near federal buildings.
• If we cannot let a mosque be built near Ground Zero, let’s not allow missions near any poor community.

The sheer bigotry and prejudice that openly lives in our society must be killed once and for all. The unanimous vote was, as stated by the New York Times, not just the right way but the only way. Let’s go further: Let’s censure every Republican to have stood against this. Let’s not stop until they are no longer a voice in our political process. We must expunge this sort of intolerance now and forever.

Obama gave a speech last night to address not so much the BP Oil Crisis, but the media narrative surrounding his involvement with it, for the two have little in common. That didn’t stop the narrative from plodding right on, but then nothing Obama can do is ever remotely in the right direction (so sayeth the narrative).

a) The Oil Spill was somehow Obama’s fault. This allows opponents to draw parallels to Hurricane Katrina (because there are only two sides to every issue and every partisan move has a direct analog, right?). Yes, the government bears responsibility, but not in the way the narrative implies.

b) The government has the resources to address the spill, with the implication that it isn’t mobilizing those resources. The governor of Louisiana got the troops he asked for. The appropriate authorities have put up barriers all along the Gulf. The government leaned on BP to provide billions in an escrow account (arguably the biggest hostile government takeover of private assets in Obama’s administration to date, yet the least controversial) to pay damages, and yelled at every American oil corporation for having basically the same policies as BP. It remains to be seen whether MMS and other regulatory agencies will have cleaned house by the time all this is done, but that’s basically the extent of government involvement. The issue, after all, is not whether the government can plug the hole itself (it can’t; nobody can), but whether it can stop corporations from breaking what they can’t fix.

c) Obama’s leadership is in question due to his impotence in the problem. I voted for Obama because he was a fresh, vigorous Democrat who looked like a strong leader, sure, but also because there was no way in hell I’d ever vote for the GOP. Obama’s inauguration was historic, sure, but aside from the warm glow of that night, nobody actually believed he was Jesus and JFK rolled up into one. Indeed, such sounds more like a GOP sneer on how strongly liberals supported Obama during his candidacy rather than how liberals saw him. So, to hold him to such a standard where he’s able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and swim to the ocean floor and beat it into submission is disingenuous at best.

There’s things to get Obama on – his criminal negligence of continued illegal detentions, his hawkish stance towards Afghanistan, etc – but he’s a politician, and one with the worst job since Hoover left office, coupled with a far more hostile congress and public than FDR ever had to deal with. We’re at the point where the GOP narrative has so poisoned the well for all government (after defanging regulatory agencies, defunding legacy projects and decades of media campaigns devaluing government initiative) that we have an entire “movement” of so-called Tea Partiers who don’t know what they want except that DC should burn. We’re at the point where reaching across the aisle means liberal Dems making deals with NDC conservative Dems, because the GOP are gleefully and cynically sabotaging government – delegitimizing the current administration – rather than looking to govern.

The idea that the same pundits can criticize Obama for not doing enough (whether it’s the bailouts, the recovery plan, the health care bill, or the BP response) while simultaneously blocking his every move is insane, but that’s the current narrative.

A very, very odd debate on the comments of this article can be summed up as shock over a statement one conservative made that, in essence, because liberals are moral relativists and statists, they are at the polar opposite, ideologically, from the concepts of universal human rights and individual liberty, for they could not fathom something being morally right all the time.

Ergo, said conservative continued, it was the conservatives that have always stood at the forefront of civil rights and pacifism, not the liberals. This sounds a lot like the sort of arguments that have been trotted about the conservative echo machine since Jonah Goldberg wrote his book.

Names like Woodrow Wilson and Leo Strauss are trotted out as proof, supposedly, that the liberal message hasn’t changed since then, which is something like trotting out Charles Darwin’s first book as proof that the theory of evolution is flawed, forgetting of course the body of scientific progress since then (or similarly, that all collectivist thought is bunk, using only Karl Marx’ work as example).

We supposedly live in a world where Lincoln freed the Blacks for purely altruistic reasons (saving Thomas Jefferson’s reputation in the meanwhile) and the Democratic party is still primarily Dixiecrats and educated elit(ist)s who dream up eugenics clauses. LBJ’s abandonment of the South in favor of a more inclusive party and Barry Goldwater’s subsequent entreaties to the same in the name of exclusion means nothing, and nor does FDR’s about-face on Wilson’s racist xenophobia with his statement, “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Strom Thurmond, of course, died in 1964.

Not that it matters, because the other half of this argument is that, because liberals have enacted collectivist policies through the state, they must be totalitarian – no matter if the state is representative or not. So Hitler’s destruction of the trade unions and Stalin’s purging of the party mean nothing, nor does theirs’ or Mussolini’s purging of intellectuals, radical dissidents or, y’know, gays, Jews, Blacks, or foreigners (most if not all of whom vote overwhelmingly Democrat here.) Wilson’s “world police” interventionist Internationalism was certainly not the central motive of Nixon’s or Reagan’s or Bush’s militarism, no sirree.

Of course, the argument’s just an anti-Democrat troll meant as the latest in a long line of fear-mongering disinformation poorly hiding the fact that it’s all a massive case of projection. The question, I suppose, is: Is this unbelievable twisted revisionism’s utter incredulity symptomatic of a sick electorate or the death of the party that espouses it? Ayn Rand’s faux-intellectual Objectivist screed has certainly found a certain brand of follower, sure, but rarely is it taken seriously…

Everybody knows the insanity of governor Jan Brewer’s suicidal* new law that basically gives Arizona police not only the right but the responsibility to demand citizenship papers of anyone they suspect may be illegal immigrants (read: All Latinos). Duncan Hunter, republican congressman from California, suggests they go one further and deport children of illegal immigrants born in the United States, despite being legal US citizens themselves.

I suggest a simple, elegant solution to the Wehrmacht surreality of Arizona: Give the state back to Mexico. It solves so many problems:

For starters, it was Mexico’s to begin with. The Latino population has more historical right to be there than their Caucasian counterparts.

Then, it rids America of a large swath of radical assault rifle-toting vigilantes (and ASU graduates), who will soon find that the Mexican Policia Federale are somewhat less forgiving, not to mention an end to the political scene that gave us John McCain and Barry Goldwater.

It’s perfect!

*Alienating Latinos, a third of the state’s voting population, is a brilliant idea for the GOP, especially since they can’t get Black votes either.

To speak of token Black shills for the evil empire, Ken Blackwell went on The Daily Show to make the basic statement, “I wrote a book calling Obama an anti-democratic tyrant… to start a debate. I like liberty,” which is, of course, more of the same disingenuous slander that Fox News, the propaganda arm of the GOP, peddles. Of course, this is on the Daily Show, where Jon Stewart has basically made a name for himself gleefully hacking such dreck to bits.

This is exactly what he did with Blackwell. But disingenuous media ploys aside, could Blackwell really believe that Obama’s “FDR-like” power plays are disastrous for the country? FDR, the architect of some of the most popular public programs and policies this country has ever seen?

There’s a reason the GOP was never able to get rid of Social Security: People like it too much. And while it certainly takes a very big government to enforce minimum wage laws and bank regulation, look what happens when it’s not there.

Of course, what should I expect from a man who claims that Obama is subverting the will of the people when he, himself – Blackwell – along with Diebold CEO Patrick O’Dell, colluded to deliver Ohio to Bush in the 2004 presidential election through systematic voter fraud?

Michael Steele, the first African-American chairman for the RNC, said the GOP “has lost its historical link to African Americans.”

What, slavery?