According to this Yahoo News story, people around the country are organizing protests against the proposed Islamic Center in lower Manhattan. They’ve got a photo of a bleeping protest in bleeping Tennessee. Give me a break. How would they feel if a bunch of New Yorkers showed up in their town and dictated to them what they could and could not build?

I didn’t pay much attention to it when it happened, but apparently a few weeks ago Pam Geller organized a protest in lower Manhattan in which people from across the U.S. assembled and protested the Islamic center. Exactly how many is a matter of dispute, but it was some number between 350 and 2 million.

Geller is organizing another protest for September 10. I am no good at organizing things, but I would just love to whip up a humongous counter-protest of NEW YORKERS. Well, OK, I’ll let New Jerseyites come too. They watched the towers burn and fall from New Jersey. But if anyone has any idea whom to prod to organize such a thing, speak up.

I get an impression that some of the protesters are opposed to building mosques anywhere in the U.S. A google search showed there already are three mosques in Manhattan and more than 30 in the New York City area. How do we know they aren’t going to train terrorists? some ask. I guess the same way we know, or hope, they aren’t training pedophiles at Saint Patrick’s. If we aren’t going to turn into a police state, sometimes you have to give people the benefit of the doubt that they are what they say they are.

But if that’s what worries the haters, then it’s far better to build a big Islamic center in lower Manhattan than anywhere else. It would be tricky to have a secret training camp in one of the more densely populated places on the planet.

Now that great waste of human protoplasm known as “Newt Gringrich” is saying “There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.” Yes, that’s mature. If the Saudis are intolerant, we have to be intolerant too, just to show we can be as intolerant as they are! That’ll show ’em!

Except the Saudis wouldn’t be affected. The ones who would be affected are “West African handbag vendors, to Egyptian halal cart owners, to a few financial workers.” Who are also New Yorkers, and Americans, by the way. Not Saudis.

Nice article by Kelly Caldwell, “Say Yes to a Mosque at Ground Zero.”

Allegedly Democratic senators Kent Conrad (ND), Ben Nelson (NE), and Evan Bayh (IN) apparently will vote to extend all the Bush tax cuts, including those of the mega-wealthy, for two more years, which probably means they will be extended two more years. I take these three are afraid of being accused of “raising taxes” before a midterm, so they’ll throw responsibility under the bus.