I’ve been trying very very very hard not to say much in public about the “Ground Zero Mosque” (which is not at ground zero and not a fucking mosque), because I find that it’s all too easy to go from zero to frothing angry maniac in about 0.0021 seconds when the subject comes up, and that’s always a drag at parties.  Breathe, breathe, it’s just the month’s round of American circle-jerk stupidity, it’ll be something else next month, no point getting worked up about it…

And yet.  And yet.  Through no fault of my own except that I occasionally make the mistake of turning on my computer and poking through the internets, I am confronted with statements like this:

“Rabbi Meyer May, the Wiesenthal Center’s executive director, tells Crain’s the proposed location is ‘insensitive’ to the families of 9/11 victims, adding that ‘religious freedom does not mean being insensitive…or an idiot. Religion is supposed to be beautiful [experience]. Why create pain in the name of religion?’”

Insensitive to the families of… okay, hold on a minute here while I go pound my face into the desk until my nose bleeds…

[pounding sounds]

Still here?  Good.  Now it’s a funny little thing, but I am apparently the last person on the face of the fucking earth who remembers that 9/11 was an actual event that happened to actual people in an actual city.  That city being New York City, a place where a more-or-less functional police and fire department did, in the aftermath, what police and fire departments are pretty much required to do when something blows up and kills people, which is identify the bodies.  And the names of the people who died on 9/11/01 are not unknown, not classified, and in fact you can look them up on this here internet thingy.

Here, let me google that for you!

So here I am, armed with nothing but a laptop, an internet connection, a search engine and two fucking brain cells to rub together, and I can already tell you, from a quick glance, that among the names of the people who died in lower Manhattan that day, there are:

Three people with “Mohammed” as their first or last name.

One person named “Ahmed”.

One “Shah.”

One “Shahid.”

One “Khalif.”

Two people named “Khan”.

One “Suleman”.

…and at this point I got bored, because actually only a complete moron would have assumed that it was possible to kill three thousand random civilians in downtown Manhattan without several of them being Muslim, because duh.

So tell me, Rabbi May, just how far away from Ground Zero should the families, friends and co-religionists of those victims stay in order to make you feel warm and fuzzy?  And while you’re contemplating important questions, could you please kindly go fuck yourself?

So is this the end of America as we know it, and the dawn of a new socialist dark ages?

God, if only.  But it’s a nice step in the right direction.

(To my occasional readers who came here by way of Dr. Landsburg and/or Dr. Kling: believe it or not, I’d be equally happy with a bill that simply outlawed health insurance entirely in much the same way that Ponzi schemes are illegal.  But I go to war with the armies I have, and the status quo was the worst of all possible options. Onward and upward.)

Now that it’s all over but the recriminations, allow me to lead with a recrimination:

Martha Coakley is a despicable human being and was a terrible candidate.  (She remains the former now that she is no longer the latter.)  Any political party who’s all-over success hinges on elevating a contemptible hack like her to higher office deserves every bit of failure it receives.

Can’t anyone here play this game?

 
On the occasion of his farewell address, I can say this at least about George W. Bush: he has managed to bring together every one of my friends, no matter what their political leanings are, in loathing. Socialist, libertarian, anarchist, liberal/progressive, communist, conservative and royalist alike: they are as one in abhorring the man and his legacy.

He campaigned to be “a uniter, not a divider.” He succeeded beyond his wildest expectations.

 
So to review: passing a state budget in California requires a 60% supermajority, but you get to decide who your next-door neighbor can marry (or how he runs his farm, or whether he can sell sex for money) on a straight up-or-down 50-percent-plus-one vote. I have always believed this system to be awe-inspiringly stupid, and today just reconfirms that belief.

I am immediately going to begin gathering signatures for a ballot initiative declaring that Angelina Jolie is not allowed to date Brad Pitt. I believe that the constituency of Californian men and women who deeply believe that Angelina would be really, really into them if only that Pitt guy wasn’t distracting her with his gorgeous eyes and rock-hard abs and stuff will easily hit the magic 50%-plus-one mark.

52% of my fellow Californians are invited to go fuck themselves. It’s a standing invitation, but why not get started now?

And speaking of people who can go fuck themselves: Where in hell was David Geffen on this?! Per sfgate.com’s handy donation-searcher, he tossed $150,000 at the no-on-8 campaign. Which sounds impressive until you remember that girlfriend is worth four and a half billion-with-a-B dollars. With the entire goddamn mormon church pumping millions of dollars a day into this campaign, the richest faggot on the planet couldn’t dig a little deeper than that? Pathetic.