They just don't GET what Americans are saying..OUT OF THE THE MAINSTREAM

The president and his defenders on the Ground Zero FIASCO are DEAF and missing the entire issue because they simply cannot receive the frequencies being broadcast.

Significantly we have Pres Obama, the Washington Post and the New York Times involved.

Let's be clear. This is a fiasco because the American people UNDERSTAND below the level of all the words flying around, that at the very least the building of this mosque precisely where it is, MAY represent a message of hope and conquest specifically to those forces who want to kill more Americans, and will reinforce those efforts with every yard of poured concrete. This feeling itself is reinforced by the inflexible approach of the builders to offers to move. This feeling is further strengthened by the history of Islamic imperial conquest which placed triumphal mosques IN the significant places and churches of others all thru it's history. No one disputes the RIGHT to build a mosque, but the vast majority believe that our Bill of Rights is being perverted against itself even as we defend it, and will follow it.

I don't see how anything in the above paragraph can be challenged factually.

None of this even begins to mention the history of Rauf, his book, its title(s), or the consonance of his actions with the Muslim Brotherhood and it's arm in Gaza, HAMAS. His stated purpose for this 'Center' is dead as a fetus.

Richard Cohen Washington Post opines the president was NOT forceful enough defending the building of the mosque:

The president muddled his message. Does he not grasp that questioning the "wisdom" of the mosque's placement is predicated on thinking that 9/11 was a Muslim crime? Does he not understand that the issue here is religious prejudice, not zoning? The answer, of course, is that he does. But unlike Henry Clay, he would rather be president than right.

The very ugly controversy over the planned Islamic center -- not at Ground Zero, mind you, and not even within eyeshot -- has managed to make fools or knaves out of some pretty smart people. Some of them have embarked on a fruitless hunt for the perfect analogy. The winner, as you might have imagined, goes to that evil cherub Newt Gingrich, formerly of Georgia but now of any meeting hall with a spotlight. He said approving the mosque "would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust museum.

Ross Douhat, NYT (thanks Pastorius):

But there's another America as well, one that understands itself as a distinctive culture, rather than just a set of political propositions. This America speaks English, not Spanish or Chinese or Arabic. It looks back to a particular religious heritage: Protestantism originally, and then a Judeo-Christian consensus that accommodated Jews and Catholics as well. It draws its social norms from the mores of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora -- and it expects new arrivals to assimilate themselves to these norms, and quickly.

These two understandings of America, one constitutional and one cultural, have been in tension throughout our history. And they're in tension again this summer, in the controversy over the Islamic mosque and cultural center scheduled to go up two blocks from ground zero.

The first America, not surprisingly, views the project as the consummate expression of our nation's high ideals. "This is America," President Obama intoned last week, "and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable." The construction of the mosque, Mayor Michael Bloomberg told New Yorkers, is as important a test of the principle of religious freedom "as we may see in our lifetimes."

The second America begs to differ. It sees the project as an affront to the memory of 9/11, and a sign of disrespect for the values of a country where Islam has only recently become part of the public consciousness. And beneath these concerns lurks the darker suspicion that Islam in any form may be incompatible with the American way of life.

This is typical of how these debates usually play out. The first America tends to make the finer-sounding speeches, and the second America often strikes cruder, more xenophobic notes.

'REFUDIATED' by those who see something lofty and noble in the mirror is the 'grubby, sweaty, more crude' America which simply says, 'hey, we do understand, and you can build it, WE ARE COMPELLED TO SEE THAT YOU CAN DO SO, but if you do, don't expect flower children at the door celebrating the years just before Maimonedes and his peoples had to run from Al Andalus for his life'

Americans are determined to see that the Bill of Rights are followed even as they are despoiled. How much more disgusted will this make Americans who see this effort to adhere to the Constitution while being realistic about what is actually occurring belittled by those who consider themselves more lofty in purpose, being and most likely education and intelligence?

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