They're building a mosque close to my house.

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='Squirrlnutz' timestamp='1284145924' post='916638']
I guess I don't see how it would be much different than it already is.

They couldn't lobby to get certain churches more or less breaks because that is in direct violation of the 1st amendment.
[/quote]


Lobbying is also a violation of their tax exemption. Individuals (except pastors) are allowed to give contributions but churches (and pastors) as a body are not.

[|Lucid|]

[quote name='Jamie_B' timestamp='1284146022' post='916641']
Lobbying is also a violation of their tax exemption. Individuals (except pastors) are allowed to give contributions but churches (and pastors) as a body are not.
[/quote]


And they do this as well... This is all why I feel like throwing up my hands and saying... "Fuck it! tax their ass!"

[Squirrlnutz]

[quote name='Jamie_B' timestamp='1284146022' post='916641']
Lobbying is also a violation of their tax exemption. Individuals (except pastors) are allowed to give contributions but churches (and pastors) as a body are not.
[/quote]
Certainly...flocko was saying (I think) that by taxing them it would....


Working this out in my head as I type.

I guess I could see churches using their "now being taxed" status as a bigger soap-box for speaking out against abortion or evolution in schools. That they would want a bigger say now that they are giving fat rolls to uncle sam.

But I'm not sure how they'd be ale to do it under the label of a specific church without violating the 1st.

Plus they do this anyway.

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='Lucid' timestamp='1284146100' post='916642']
And they do this as well... This is all why I feel like throwing up my hands and saying... "Fuck it! tax their ass!"
[/quote]


When they do they lose their tax exempt status, i believe.

[|Lucid|]

[quote name='Jamie_B' timestamp='1284146910' post='916647']
When they do they lose their tax exempt status, i believe.
[/quote]


That's only if you can prove it... And I distinctly remember it being reported that churches basically endorsed candidates during the last election.. As far as I know no action was taken.

[oldschooler]

[quote name='Lucid' timestamp='1284135585' post='916556']
Like I said before.. Just because some assholes were Muslim and used their faith as support for what they did does not mean that Islam itself has done anything to America.

And besides.. They didn't attack us [i]because[/i] of their faith.. It was a geo-political action that was committed with political goals in mind.. They may have used scripture to justify their attacks.. But that is a HUGE difference than attacking BECAUSE of their religion.

The problem as I see it, is that Americans mistakenly feel as though they were attacked by a religion, and not some crazy misguided assholes that happened to be religious. Their faith shouldn't be any more important than the faith of someone in the KKK or Ted Bundy or McVeigh.

Your comparison to the Japanese would be appropriate if it were Al-Qaeda that wanted to build this center.. We were at war with Japan... We aren't (or shouldn't be) at war with Islam.
[/quote]

Who said Islam did anything to America?

And who said they attacked [i]because[/i] of their religion?

[i]I said they attacked us and used their religion as reasoning
[/i]
Why are they called Muslim extremists and why did they declare a "Holy War"
if they did not attack us in the name of their religion?


And fair or unfair, the Muslim religion was villified after the attacks, the same way
Japanese people were after the attacks.

Again, do you not think Ground Zero and Islam being together is a delicate situation?
I bet you heard the words "Muslim" and "Islam" more on the day of and the days following
9/11, than you had ever heard in your life.

And some of you are a bit over dramatic. I say I think it is tactless for them to want to build
a Mosque so close to Ground Zero. I get shit said about "rights", seperate but equal and
other shit. Just like the pastor that wants to burn the Quran has rights to do so. That doesn't
mean it is in good taste, it doesn't offend and that he should do it.

It is just my opinion that it is tactless. I am no more right in my opinion than you are your's.
And I am no more wrong in my opinion than you are your's.

[|Lucid|]

[quote name='oldschooler' timestamp='1284151343' post='916665']
Who said Islam did anything to America?

And who said they attacked [i]because[/i] of their religion?

[i]I said they attacked us and used their religion as reasoning
[/i]
Why are they called Muslim extremists and why did they declare a "Holy War"
if they did not attack us in the name of their religion?


And fair or unfair, the Muslim religion was villified after the attacks, the same way
Japanese people were after the attacks.

Again, do you not think Ground Zero and Islam being together is a delicate situation?
I bet you heard the words "Muslim" and "Islam" more on the day of and the days following
9/11, than you had ever heard in your life.

And some of you are a bit over dramatic. I say I think it is tactless for them to want to build
a Mosque so close to Ground Zero. I get shit said about "rights", seperate but equal and
other shit. Just like the pastor that wants to burn the Quran has rights to do so. That doesn't
mean it is in good taste, it doesn't offend and that he should do it.

It is just my opinion that it is tactless. I am no more right in my opinion than you are your's.
And I am no more wrong in my opinion than you are your's.
[/quote]

Ok... If you want to think it is unreasonable that this center be built there because of it affiliation with Islam I obviously can't stop you..

Just remember the next time that someone treats you like shit because of some superficial affiliation you have with someone that has done them wrong, that you should respect that and remember that you support that type of reaction.

[oldschooler]

[quote name='Lucid' timestamp='1284151882' post='916668']
Ok... If you want to think it is unreasonable that this center be built there because of it affiliation with Islam I obviously can't stop you..

Just remember the next time that someone treats you like shit because of some superficial affiliation you have with someone that has done them wrong, that you should respect that and remember that you support that type of reaction.
[/quote]



I do not think it is unreasonable. It is their right, so it is reasonable.
I think it is tactless.

And I am not treating anyone like shit. Where am I treating anyone like shit?
I am stating my opinion on the topic at hand. You can have such an opinion
and not be a bigot or whatever.

And call it superficial all you want.

The fact is, we were not attacked by a Country. We were attacked by a group
from a lot of different Countries. And they hi-jacked their religion to use as
reasoning. So that religion is connected with the attacks. That's not something
I am making up. And it is not something I relish. It is what it is. And it is why
some people are against the Mosque being so close.


Look. I am just giving my opinion on the topic. I know we are not at war with Islam.
I am not hating on people that are Muslim. I am not saying we should round them
all up and blah blah, whatever. I am just saying that I think the Imam saying that he
didn't think it would stir up pain was tactless. And I think now that he sees that it
has stirred up pain, and he says he wants to move forward for National Security
is also tacless. I think they could have the place they desire, but have it somewhere else.
If they move forward with it at the proposed location, so be it. It still be be tactless in my eyes.
That's all.

[BengalBacker]

[img]http://media.ebaumsworld.com/picture/Antfish/poster84762152.jpg[/img]











If they build it I'm torching the melting pot.



































I KEED !!!
[img]http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/4511/687777-triumph_super.jpg[/img]








Maybe...

[Homer_Rice]

I'd look to medieval and early modern European history to get a sense of the potential pitfalls of allowing the state to use its coercive powers to tax religious institutions. That said, I wouldn't mind beefing up IRS audits of those which appear to get into a lot of extracurricular activity, using exising law.

If we are going to tax, then tax the shit out of Wall Street. Increase the cap gains tax on short term transactions or institute a derivatives transactions tax. Use those coercive powers of the state to rein in the grossly speculative aspects of finance which have nothing to do with capital investment in productive activity.

[Homer_Rice]

[quote name='BengalBacker' timestamp='1284163358' post='916723']
[img]http://media.ebaumsworld.com/picture/Antfish/poster84762152.jpg[/img]
[/quote]
One of my favorite ventriloquist acts!

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='BengalBacker' timestamp='1284163358' post='916723']
[img]http://media.ebaumsworld.com/picture/Antfish/poster84762152.jpg[/img]If they build it I'm torching the melting pot.:ninja:I KEED !!![img]http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/4511/687777-triumph_super.jpg[/img]Maybe...
[/quote]


Ok that's HA-LARRY-OUS



[quote name='Homer_Rice' timestamp='1284164186' post='916728']
I'd look to medieval and early modern European history to get a sense of the potential pitfalls of allowing the state to use its coercive powers to tax religious institutions. That said, I wouldn't mind beefing up IRS audits of those which appear to get into a lot of extracurricular activity, using exising law.If we are going to tax, then tax the shit out of Wall Street. Increase the cap gains tax on short term transactions or institute a derivatives transactions tax. Use those coercive powers of the state to rein in the grossly speculative aspects of finance which have nothing to do with capital investment in productive activity.
[/quote]


Yes yes yes!! Tax the hell out of derivatives and all other speculative non-real wealth creation!!!

[Jamie_B]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/09/09/ST2010090904766.html

[quote]

Let's stop playing into bin Laden's hands

By Ted Koppel
Sunday, Sep 12, 2010
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, succeeded far beyond anything Osama bin Laden could possibly have envisioned. This is not just because they resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths, nor only because they struck at the heart of American financial and military power. Those outcomes were only the bait; it would remain for the United States to spring the trap.

The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another. Bin Laden deserves to be the object of our hostility, national anguish and contempt, and he deserves to be taken seriously as a canny tactician. But much of what he has achieved we have done, and continue to do, to ourselves. Bin Laden does not deserve that we, even inadvertently, fulfill so many of his unimagined dreams.

It did not have to be this way. The Bush administration's initial response was just about right. The calibrated combination of CIA operatives, special forces and air power broke the Taliban in Afghanistan and sent bin Laden and the remnants of al-Qaeda scurrying across the border into Pakistan. The American reaction was quick, powerful and effective -- a clear warning to any organization contemplating another terrorist attack against the United States. This is the point at which President George W. Bush should have declared "mission accomplished," with the caveat that unspecified U.S. agencies and branches of the military would continue the hunt for al-Qaeda's leader. The world would have understood, and most Americans would probably have been satisfied.

But the insidious thing about terrorism is that there is no such thing as absolute security. Each incident provokes the contemplation of something worse to come. The Bush administration convinced itself that the minds that conspired to turn passenger jets into ballistic missiles might discover the means to arm such "missiles" with chemical, biological or nuclear payloads. This became the existential nightmare that led, in short order, to a progression of unsubstantiated assumptions: that Saddam Hussein had developed weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons; that there was a connection between the Iraqi leader and al-Qaeda.

Bin Laden had nothing to do with fostering these misconceptions. None of this had any real connection to 9/11. There was no group known as "al-Qaeda in Iraq" at that time. But the political climate of the moment overcame whatever flaccid opposition there was to invading Iraq, and the United States marched into a second theater of war, one that would prove far more intractable and painful and draining than its supporters had envisioned.

While President Obama has recently declared America's combat role in Iraq over, he glossed over the likelihood that tens of thousands of U.S. troops will have to remain there, possibly for several years to come, because Iraq lacks the military capability to protect itself against external (read: Iranian) aggression. The ultimate irony is that Hussein, to keep his neighbors in check, allowed them and the rest of the world to believe that he might have weapons of mass destruction. He thereby brought about his own destruction, as well as the need now for U.S. forces to fill the void that he and his menacing presence once provided.

As for the 100,000 U.S. troops in or headed for Afghanistan, many of them will be there for years to come, too -- not because of America's commitment to a functioning democracy there; even less because of what would happen to Afghan girls and women if the Taliban were to regain control. The reason is nuclear weapons. Pakistan has an arsenal of 60 to 100 nuclear warheads. Were any of those to fall into the hands of al-Qaeda's fundamentalist allies in Pakistan, there is no telling what the consequences might be.

Again, this dilemma is partly of our own making. America's war on terrorism is widely perceived throughout Pakistan as a war on Islam. A muscular Islamic fundamentalism is gaining ground there and threatening the stability of the government, upon which we depend to guarantee the security of those nuclear weapons. Since a robust U.S. military presence in Pakistan is untenable for the government in Islamabad, however, tens of thousands of U.S. troops are likely to remain parked next door in Afghanistan for some time.

Perhaps bin Laden foresaw some of these outcomes when he launched his 9/11 operation from Taliban-secured bases in Afghanistan. Since nations targeted by terrorist groups routinely abandon some of their cherished principles, he may also have foreseen something along the lines of Abu Ghraib, "black sites," extraordinary rendition and even the prison at Guantanamo Bay. But in these and many other developments, bin Laden needed our unwitting collaboration, and we have provided it -- more than $1 trillion spent on two wars, more than 5,000 of our troops killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans dead. Our military is so overstretched that defense contracting -- for everything from interrogation to security to the gathering of intelligence -- is one of our few growth industries.

We have raced to Afghanistan and Iraq, and more recently to Yemen and Somalia; we have created a swollen national security apparatus; and we are so absorbed in our own fury and so oblivious to our enemy's intentions that we inflate the building of an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan into a national debate and watch, helpless, while a minister in Florida outrages even our friends in the Islamic world by threatening to burn copies of the Koran.

If bin Laden did not foresee all this, then he quickly came to understand it. In a 2004 video message, he boasted about leading America on the path to self-destruction. "All we have to do is send two mujaheddin . . . to raise a small piece of cloth on which is written 'al-Qaeda' in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses."

Through the initial spending of a few hundred thousand dollars, training and then sacrificing 19 of his foot soldiers, bin Laden has watched his relatively tiny and all but anonymous organization of a few hundred zealots turn into the most recognized international franchise since McDonald's. Could any enemy of the United States have achieved more with less?

Could bin Laden, in his wildest imaginings, have hoped to provoke greater chaos? It is past time to reflect on what our enemy sought, and still seeks, to accomplish -- and how we have accommodated him.

Ted Koppel, who was managing editor of ABC's "Nightline" from 1980 to 2005, is a contributing analyst for BBC World News America. He will be online Monday, Sept. 13, at 2 p.m. ET to chat. Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.[/quote]

[Jamie_B]

For those opposed to this location, what is the number of blocks away from it you would feel ok with?

[BengalBacker]

[quote name='Jamie_B' timestamp='1284178330' post='916788']
For those opposed to this location, what is the number of blocks away from it you would feel ok with?
[/quote]

42

[oldschooler]

[quote name='Jamie_B' timestamp='1284178330' post='916788']
For those opposed to this location, what is the number of blocks away from it you would feel ok with?
[/quote]




2,752 or 4,192.

[Homer_Rice]

Out at the amll, next to the Ba'ath, Bedouin, and Beyond store.

[|Bunghole|]

I liked Ted Koppel's article, Jamie.

And Homer, that was priceless!

[Homer_Rice]

[quote name='Bunghole' timestamp='1284208023' post='916828']
I liked Ted Koppel's article, Jamie.

And Homer, that was priceless!


[/quote]
Stole that from a good kid who wrote a piece for the Lex Herald-Leader. The irony is that he's an athiest who sings in an Episcopalian choir and supports placing the center at the proposed location.

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='BengalBacker' timestamp='1284187672' post='916809']
42
[/quote]


[quote name='oldschooler' timestamp='1284204034' post='916816']
2,752 or 4,192.
[/quote]



So much further away than the Mosque that is already 5 blocks away.


[quote]Another, the Manhattan Mosque, stands five blocks from the northeast corner of the World Trade Center site[/quote]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38760800/

[oldschooler]

[quote name='Jamie_B' timestamp='1284213026' post='916853']
So much further away than the Mosque that is already 5 blocks away.




[url="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38760800/"]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38760800/[/url]
[/quote]

Yes. It was already there.

I picked the death toll of the WTC attacks and the number
of hits Pete Rose, who is a great American, got on this date.
Both fitting numbers.


And if there was one 5 blocks away already, and another 12 blocks away, then why build one 2 blocks away?

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='oldschooler' timestamp='1284219102' post='916871']
Yes. It was already there.

I picked the death toll of the WTC attacks and the number
of hits Pete Rose, who is a great American, got on this date.
Both fitting numbers.


And if there was one 5 blocks away already, and another 12 blocks away, then why build one 2 blocks away?
[/quote]


Its two blocks from the tip, its 4 blocks from where the planned memorial is.

[oldschooler]

[quote name='Jamie_B' timestamp='1284219770' post='916874']
Its two blocks from the tip, its 4 blocks from where the planned memorial is.
[/quote]


Yeah, so?

[Homer_Rice]

[url="http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/if-mosque-isnt-built-no-longer-america"]Michael Moore resolves the distance problem.[/url]

[oldschooler]

[quote name='Homer_Rice' timestamp='1284220193' post='916878']
[url="http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/if-mosque-isnt-built-no-longer-america"]Michael Moore resolves the distance problem.[/url]
[/quote]



Michael Moore, the voice of reason. No slant there. lol

I did like this a lot though ...



6. There is a [url="https://twitter.com/anildash/status/21165825058"][b][size="4"][color="#bb0000"]McDonald's[/color][/size][/b][/url] two blocks from Ground Zero. Trust me, McDonald's has killed far more people than the terrorists.


And they are attacking you daily, huh Michael? lol