After a Hiatus: Chock Full O' Links

I haven't blogged since August 6th.  Good thing I didn't sign up for "Nablopomo" (National Blog Posting Month) for August.  I would have been run out of town for noncompliance.  My time has been taken up with resume (curriculum vitae to some) editing and interviews.  I am actively seeking work, and between that, and guests who stayed over last Shabbat involving much preparation, I was a victim of "so many____(fill in the blank with everything I did last week and this), so little time."

It's interesting to note that even though daily blogging became slightly stressful at times (when will I write? What will I write?!), it kept me in practice, and honed my skills, if you can call this a 'skill.'  Now that I have not blogged in exactly one week, I feel somewhat rusty.

It's not as if there is no news to blog about. I think there is plenty--there almost always is.  Some examples?  How about Russia loading fuel into Iran's nuclear reactor (it shows what a great friend Russia is), and--

the so-called "Israeli Serial Killer" nabbed after having boarded a Delta flight to Tel-Aviv whom many readers just assumed was Jewish, thus commenting on various articles with vile hatred dripping from their keyboards--partially because most news reports buried the fact  that the killer was a Christian Arab deep within their stories, except for some such as ABC News, who had it in their lead (hat tip Meryl Yourish).

And what of this one: the parents who named their kid Adolf Hitler Campbell (who last year were refused by a supermarket when they ordered a birthday cake with their child's name written in frosting) have lost custody of their three children, all of whom have Nazi-inspired names.

Or, how about that Dr. Laura--who dishes out personal advice in her radio show as if she is a psychologist or family therapist (she does have a Ph.D., though--in physiology) saying the "N" word repeatedly on the air and offending a caller complaining about racial slurs?

Now, here's a story you've probably actually been following: the controversy over building a mosque near Ground Zero.  My opinion on this? I'm totally against it.  I believe that Mayor Bloomberg's decision favoring it--which greatly disappoints me--is naive, dangerous, and shows the enemy just how soft we really are.

The mosque's Imam, Faisal Abdul Rauf, I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw him.  He explains away terrorism as happening because Muslims have been "humiliated and ignored."

Awwwwww. And Jews haven't been "humiliated" and not ignored, but much worse--persecuted, discriminated against, forced to convert to both Christianity and Islam and murdered on and off for centuries??  When was the last time the Jews blew up 3,000 people in the name of Judaism? Oh, and in addition, the good Imam obliquely blames the U.S. as an "accessory" to the attacks of 9/11.

Are we daft to allow this?  Tawfik Hamid thinks so.  See what he writes about the tenets of Islam and what this mosque will accomplish.  Charles Krauthammer put it so well when he said it's all about location, location, location (emphasis mine):

Location matters. Especially this location. Ground Zero is the site of the greatest mass murder in American history -- perpetrated by Muslims of a particular Islamist orthodoxy in whose cause they died and in whose name they killed.

And also thank you, Pat Condell, for speaking up on this subject and not mincing words.  Again.



Read more on the proposed mosque and it's Imam here, and here.


In short, there's a wealth of very important and also some very weird news out there.  I just don't have the patience yet to write about it all, so I am posting this first post after a hiatus of one week chock full o' links. Be sure to read 'em.  With coffee.