Jesus Christ, now we have copycat drunks?
If it's not a drunken man allegedly stabbing a cabbie because he's Muslim, then it's a drunken man entering a Queens mosque and urinating on its prayer rugs. Last night, at the Al-Iman Mosque on Steinway Street, an apparently intoxicated man stormed in and "shouted anti-Muslim slurs as he urinated on prayer rugs," the Post reports. Naturally, that interrupted the evening prayers.
According to witnesses, Omar Rivera was shouting slurs and calling the worshippers "terrorists." One told the Post, "He stuck up his middle finger and cursed at everyone... No one can pray now because the rugs are completely soiled. It was disgusting... He calls us terrorists, yet he comes into our mosque and terrorizes other people... This is a true hate crime."
That's it, I'm moving to a cave somewhere in the Northwest Territories and waiting out this latest wave of media-sponsored hate.
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I would like to know what was playing on the TV screen in the bar where Michael Enright was getting drunk for four hours before stabbing a Muslim cab driver the other night.
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BBC News: Former US President Jimmy Carter has secured the release of an American citizen detained in North Korea (and he also got North Korea to commit to return to the peace table to discuss halting their nuclear weapons program).
I can't help but laugh at the morons on the right who, just days ago, pegged Jimmy Carter, in their fevered little cranial voids, the worst American ever.
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Taibbi on the summer of their discontent.
"So who are you today, Glenn? Jesus Christ Roger Ebert's post on the Park 51 project is a must-read, but this bit about Sarah Palin was especially good:
6. Somewhere on the Right is an anonymous genius at creating memes. Sarah Palin floats a suspicious number of them: Death Panels, Ground Zero Mosque, 9/11 Mosque, Terror Babies. Her tweets are mine fields of coded words; for her, "patriot" is defined as, "those who agree with me." When she says "Americans," it is not inclusive. These two must have been carefully composed in advance to be tweeted within 60 seconds of each other:She really does represent everything that is wrong with conservatism in this country. Nationalistic, hawkish, vapid, and above all dishonest. Quite the avatar for a dying movement. (Well, perhaps not quite dead yet…we'll see what the upcoming elections hold. Still – any gains will be short-lived. There is no long-term sustainability to this movement. Obstructionism does not lead to good governance.)
By using the evocative word "shackles" she associates Dr. Laura's use of the N-word with the suffering of slaves. By implying Dr. Laura was silenced by "Constitutional obstructionists," she employs the methodology of the Big Lie, defined in Mein Kampf as an untruth so colossal that "no one would believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." She uses the trigger word "reload" to evoke her support of Second Amendment activists while attacking "activists" for evoking the First.
Ebert also notes that on a 55,000 square foot retail mall is going to be built on Ground Zero – like some grotesque monument to the gods of consumerism, an epilogue to the infamous "don't let the terrorists keep you from shopping" plea from George W. Bush. His (Ebert's) alternative is much better (from a piece he wrote on September 12 2001):
If there is to be a memorial, let it not be of stone and steel. Fly no flag above it, for it is not the possession of a nation but a sorrow shared with the world.Let it be a green field, with trees and flowers. Let there be paths that wind through the shade. Put out park benches where old people can sun in the springtime, and a pond where children can skate in the winter.Beneath this field will lie entombed forever some of the victims of September 11. It is not where they thought to end their lives. Like the sailors of the battleship Arizona, they rest where they fell.
Let this field stretch from one end of the destruction to the other. Let this open space among the towers mark the emptiness in our hearts. But do not make it a sad place. Give it no name. Let people think of it as the green field. Every living thing that is planted here will show faith in the future.
Let students from all lands take a sunny corner of the field and plant a crop there. Perhaps corn, our native grain. Let the harvest be shared all over the world, with friends and enemies, because that is the teaching of our religions. Let the harvest show that life prevails over death, and let the sharing show that we love our neighbors.
Do not build again on this place. No building can stand here. No building, no statue, no column, no arch, no symbol, no name, no date, no statement. Just the comfort of the earth, to remind us that we share it.
Further to our report last week Halliburton has confirmed that it has been awarded a letter of intent by Shell Iraq Petroleum Development B.V. for the development of the Majnoon field in Southern Iraq.
Dow Jones suggests the contract for the 15 wells could be worth $150m.
The giant Majnoon field is one of the world's largest oilfields. The letter of intent provides that Halliburton will serve as project manager for the development work, in affiliation with Nabors Drilling and Iraq Drilling Company (IDC). The contract is still subject to final approval by the appropriate Iraqi authorities.
Shell is lead operator and holds a 45 percent share, partner Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Petronas) holds 30 percent and the Iraqi state holds 25 percent of the participating interests in all licenses. Shell has announced that the consortium intends to increase production from the current ~45,000 barrels of oil per day to a targeted production plateau of 1.8 million barrels of oil per day.
"Halliburton has made a sizeable investment in Iraq and we look forward to providing services to Shell and the consortium in order to increase production at this historic oil field," said Dave Lesar, Halliburton's Chairman, President and CEO. "We have in place the technology, equipment and personnel to ensure that we deliver the solutions that will help our customers in this region to meet their production goals."
Halliburton has been active in the Middle East since 1946. Currently, Halliburton has more than 4,000 employees in the Middle East, and construction on phase I of Halliburton's 400-man base in Burjisia, Iraq is complete.
Since 2001, 130,000 Americans have been killed in falls. 30,000 have drowned.
Since 2001, roughly 3,000 Americans have died in terrorist attacks (most on one day).[1]
But guess which one of those causes of death have resulted in a huge Federal and state bureaucracies and guess which one has resulted in unprecedented governmental infringement on liberties.
Don't you love it when complex issues are framed and simplified into clean black and white terms? Your choice has come down to voting Democratic and perpetuating a godless, socialist society or voting Republican and returning to a time of milk, honey and Christian faith.
It's a clear cut choice. I hope those pesky Muslims and gay folks are listening.
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"All I ask are three simple things. First he should spend time with the parents of a child who killed himself after 2004, after that horrible election. I think that he needs to take the fabulous $3M condo he bought in Manhattan and donate that back to the cause that he worked so hard against. And most important, he needs to put up a heartfelt apology, up on YouTube or somwhere on the web, where he actually looks at the American people and says 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what I did and I'm going to work in the future to make it better.' But he has NO desire to apologize. He has no regrets, he says."
