I expect this sort of nonsense from Republicans. I don’t expect it from Howard Dean:
I’ve got to believe there has to be a compromise here. This isn’t about the rights of Muslims to have a worship…or Jews or Christians or anybody else to have a place to worship, or anyplace, or Ground Zero. This is something that we ought to be able to work out with people of good faith, and we have to understand that it is a real affront to people who lost their lives, including Muslims. That site doesn’t belong to any particular religion, it belongs to all Americans, and all faiths, so I think a good, reasonable compromise could be worked out without violating the principle that people ought to be able to worship as they see fit.
GOODMAN: You’re calling for a compromise, so are you calling for the mosque to be moved?
DEAN: Well, I think another site would be a better idea, again, but I’d look to do that with the cooperation of the people who are trying to build the mosque. I believe that the people who are trying to build the mosque are trying to do something that’s good, but there’s no point in starting off and trying to do something that’s good if it’s going to meet with an enormous resistance from a lot of folks.
Dude. Seriously?
- It’s not a mosque;
- it’s not at ground zero;
- no one objecting to “the ground zero mosque” who actually knows anything about it is acting in good faith.
If there’s one thing that offends me more than bigotry it’s idiocy.
Update: Per Talking Points Memo, referencing Sam Stein’s followup:
Dean says the Cordoba House proponents are being inflexible. And maybe they are. But he also makes clear that he takes “the congregation at its word that it is a moderate congregation trying to heal the wounds of 9/11.” Only there’s no congregation. It’s a investment group (Soho Properties) and a Muslim non-profit (the Cordoba Initiative) trying put this together. Ahh, never mind. But he does point out that “best way to heal the wounds is not to have a court battle, but to sit down and try to work things out.” Good point, only there’s no Court battle. It’s done. They got the approval. Maybe someone will get Mayor Bloomberg ginned up about Muslim plot to make us all eat Halal food. But there’s no court battle.
Doing your homework. What a concept …
[Facepalm]
Too much time spent on CNBC must’ve inflicted brain damage.
to New Hampshire, and to South Carolina, and Oklahoma, and Arizona, and North Dakota, and New Mexico, and to California, and Texas, and (back to) New York, and to South Dakota, and Oregon, and Washington, and Michigan. And then to Washington, DC to take back the White House YEAGH!!!!”
What a disgrace.
Wow. Good thing nobody told the Founding Fathers that.
… And it ain’t pretty.
…the more they stay insane. Isn’t it nice to know that no matter how hard he works, no matter how much he learns about Democratic party organizing, no matter how much blow-back he gets from the DLC thugs, nothing — NOTHING — will stop Howie from saddling up his mouth and running off with it even though it has no legs under it at all?
Good heavens, he doesn’t even have the excuse that he’s a craven candidate in a tough race.
Only one avenue for trying to recover some self-respect: get the facts, admit he didn’t know what the heck he was talking about, say that now he DOES know what’s going on he can’t believe he ever said anything that stupid.
I cannot believe this. Dean is smarter than this. He, of all people, knows the machinations of the media wurlitzer. He knows exactly much of a non-troversy this is. He should be doubling down on the fight against the cowardice, ignorance, and bigotry, not joining the parade. I am simply stunned.
As a nation, we have taken leave of our senses. We have allowed a single day’s deranged crime spree to permanently deform the way we think about ourselves and the way we think about the rest of humanity. The marginalized crazies who perpetrated these crimes could not have in their wildest dreams anticipated how much of a victory our overreaction would reward them with; how quickly the progress achieved in two-centuries of American democratic civilization could collapse into a paranoid landscape of hatred and fear. By seizing the opportunity to characterize the crimes as “acts of war,” President Chicken Little wrote himself carte blanche to drag us kicking and screaming back to the Dark Ages. Bad enough; but we bought it for a while…we bought it all; hook, line and sinker…sold to us first by CNN and then more flamboyantly by Fox “News.” We never knew what hit us. And in a twinkling, it was too late to save the fragile illusion that we had defeated prejudice, were above torture, loved our neighbor as ourselves, held personal privacy sacred, celebrated a nation of immigrants; and held freedom of belief as our crowning achievement.
when you say “but there’s no point in starting off and trying to do something that’s good if it’s going to meet with an enormous resistance from a lot of folks”; did you say the same thing in 2003 and ’04?
Thankfully at that time you had decided that reality, truth and righteousness were more important than resistance … but I can see you’ve donned your surrender monkey suit and joined the rest of the DC Dems.
Hey … thanks (not) dude.
Of COURSE they’re being “inflexible” – a bunch of intolerant hatemongers are telling them they can’t use their multi-million dollar piece of property because it might make racist thugs feel icky! Good for them. This kind of “inflexibility” is the only appropriate response to bigoted cowardice.
Next thing you know, Dean, Reid, and Pelosi will come out saying that black folks should eat at different lunch counters out of sensitivity for the crackers who’d rather have the best stools for themselves. Or that Catholics shouldn’t run for President, out of sensitivity for the non-“Papists” in our country. Or …
Enough!
This playbook is so timeworn, you’d think the people in leadership on the left would have the damn thing memorized – along with all the defensive and offensive plays to counteract it. It’s incomprehensible to me that this lunatic non-troversy is given any legitimacy at all by anyone with more advanced critical thinking skills than an average 4 year old.