Someone has had a great idea: let’s build a 13-story mosque 600 yards from “Ground Zero” at the World Trade Center in New York City. The keg of worms opened up by this proposal had to have been foreseen, yet the project was launched anyway.

I don’t really care to argue or reiterate the points made by the plan’s proponents; they are right to want to expose people to a more fair and balanced examination of Islam than what the average American gets from watching television. It is also incorrect, in the factual sense, to view the proposed mosque as a monument to terrorism. Any educated brain knows that the terrorists who flew jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not terrorists simply because they were Muslims, just like Timothy McVeigh did not bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City just because he was a Republican, a Roman Catholic, and a member of the NRA.

The true evil of terrorism lies in the acts themselves and their perpetrators, and not in the core beliefs held by millions of people which happen to be shared, supposedly, by these terrorists. How many homosexuals have been beaten to death on a city street somewhere by people who consider themselves to possess Christian values?

So, with the blatantly obvious out of the way, why do I agree that building this mosque at Ground Zero is a bad idea, even though I don’t see an equation between celebrating Islam and propagating terrorism?

Because it’s a bad idea, and everyone involved knows it, yet they decided to pursue it anyway. This is not a matter of differences in religious or ideological stances. Racism, homophobia, women’s suffrage – these were and are valid social issues, and yes, sometimes reform in these cases is not achieved through quiet contemplation. However, many Americans equate terrorism with Islam, and they fear Islam because they don’t really know much about it. In other words, they are not necessarily objecting to specific values held by Islam, they are simply afraid of what they don’t know.

There is no reason that I am aware of why this mosque has to be built at Ground Zero. I guess the sentiment is that if we build this mosque, and people will be more readily exposed to it, in time we will learn more about Islam. Perhaps. But these good intentions will eventually be overshadowed by public outcry and eventual vandalism. This “building of peace” will be a magnet for every local yahoo. It has not even been a full decade since 9/11. While it may be true that it’s unfair to blame Islam for 9/11, it is nevertheless illogical to proceed with this plan and expect an outcome that is of a different nature than what we are already seeing

According to a CNN.com article, an American woman wrote to President Obama asking for his help in resolving her husband’s immigration problem. The hubby’s bid for political asylum had been denied a decade ago, and the man has been dodging immigration authorities since then, remaining in the country illegally.

The guy has not been sitting on his laurels in the meantime, however: the couple got married five years ago, and he finished an engineering degree two years ago.

Having entered the U.S. legally myself, with the intent to marry a U.S. citizen, and being therefore familiar with the process, I find it difficult to understand how a guy who managed to get an engineering degree failed to take care of this problem a long time ago. His wife is even a VP at a marketing firm. Surely they had the financial and intellectual resources to determine the best course of action to change his status.

The President isn’t a 911 operator or an immigration attorney. If you get arrested for dodging a deportation order, your lawyer is your first phone call. The President has taken an oath to uphold the laws of this country; should he personally help you find loopholes around them just because you know how to write a letter and lick a stamp?

I don’t agree with how the man was detained, as described by the article in question, but this piece is written with such an obvious slant that I have to wonder what’s being left out.

President Barack Obama’s speech on Tuesday night has garnered some negative reviews, not so much due to the message itself – that’s inconsequential, after all – as much as the difficult language used by our Commander-in-Chief. Paul Payack, the president of Global Language Monitor, a Texas-based company that analyzes the cultural impact of word choices, considered President Obama’s speech to have been written at a 9.8 grade level.

In other words, you probably had to have gone to high school in order to understand it.

Here’s a sentence from President Obama’s speech, chosen by Mr. Payack as particularly difficult to follow:

“That is why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge – a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation’s secretary of energy.”

On the other hand, a phrase like “oil began spewing” was supposedly more comprehensible.

Perhaps it is because English is not my native language, or that I never experienced the American public education system first-hand, but I did not find President Obama’s speech difficult to follow. In my opinion, that sentence which Mr. Payack singled out, is simple and to the point.

I am, quite frankly, disturbed by the notion that the President of the United States should dumb down and simplify his speeches to match the intellects of the academically uninspired. I would go so far as to suggest that the “leader of the free world” should be speaking at a 10th grade level or higher.

Perhaps we got spoiled by those eight years with Bush.

The daily influx of emails from some of my more Fox News-oriented friends revealed a couple of real gems. Apparently no one does any fact-checking whatsoever these days; people are happy to forward any politically motivated chain letter so long as it coincides with their own political leanings.

First on our list is this picture of a “clothing tag”:

The image was followed by a message in huge letters proclaiming that “small business [was] alive and well in America.”

What this email forgot to mention was that this tag is from a laptop bag made by a Seattle company back in 2004. The president being referred to was George W. Bush.

I guess whoever found this image and randomly decided to email it to people, insinuating that it was referring to President Obama, probably forgot that while the French were not crazy about Bush, they actually love Obama. That alone should have clued them in to the fact that this was about Bush, but of course, as always, reaching that conclusion requires a healthy dose of logic.

The second contender of the day in our fresh batch of anti-Obama propaganda is a “message from Grand Isle“, which claims that during Obama’s visit to Grand Isle, his cronies brought in bus load after bus load of workers to make it seem like a cleaning operation was taking place there. You know, as if Obama was doing something.

This same letter, the author of which remains conveniently unknown (but whom everyone seems to claim to know through a friend), also claims that no one came to see President Obama, to wave any flags, and that the entire island literally ignored his presence there.

This, of course, is supposed to suggest that no one likes President Obama. Everybody hates him. Guess he should go eat some worms.

What boggles my mind is that if Grand Isle residents are concerned about the effects of the BP oil spill which threatens their livelihood, and the most powerful man in the country – if not the world – is visiting the location, why would they choose to ignore his presence? How does ignoring a visit from an extremely powerful Commander-in-Chief improve the oil spill situation?

If there is an opportunity to talk to the President, shake hands, and ask questions, and if indeed no clean-up crews have bothered to show up to Grand Isle before, then wouldn’t you want to, you know, bring it up? Maybe?

Oh, and in case it matters: the workers being bussed into town were actually there courtesy of BP, to clean up their public profile. These workers had nothing to do with Obama or the federal government.

But hey, cool story, bro.

So, you, like so many others, have spent the recent months on the road with a motley crew of Mensa members in 18th century garments, protesting against health care, tax cuts, education, lamp-posts, and shopping carts with one missing wheel. Now, out of the blue, you’re reading from someone’s Facebook update that the bill that was printed on both sides of hundreds of thousands of pages, and which grants the government the right to make it easier for people to keep themselves alive (whatever happened to a man’s right to have a coronary on a Burger King parking lot?), has actually been passed in secrecy in the dead of night. Who knew?

Suddenly, it seems like you’re running out of things to fear. However, the flame of unabashed, uninformed patriotism is still flickering feverishly – and there is more to come.

Salmon & Shyster is publishing the 8,000-page health reform bill in its entirety, according to the publisher’s spokesperson. “We are printing the whole thing, all twelve thousand pages of it,” spokesperson Amanda Hugginkess stated under condition of anonymity. “Nothing is going to be left out, it’s all there,” Ms. Hugginkess said moments before being distracted by a bird. “Every word of that 16,000-page bill is going to be there. Plus, as a special treat, there will be illustrations provided by a well-known politician. I’m not going to spoil the surprise, but he’s one of the black leaders of the RNC.” Ms. Hugginkess refused to reveal the cartoonist’s identity, and hurriedly went on attempting to keep her place in line for the recently released 12th volume of the Harry Potter series. “Cool, there’s magic in this one.”

Despite the publisher’s excitement, the anticipation on the streets is lukewarm at best.

“I’m not gonna buy it,” ombudsman Timothy McDonald said, shaking his head. “I don’t need to read it to know what’s in it.” McDonald, on his way home from visiting his sick grandmother, stated that most of what he needed to know he had already learned from television. Citing public prejudice, McDonald refused to reveal his sources. “I ain’t gonna tell you what channel, but it’s like an animal. Not the emu, but the other one.”

As of now, Salmon & Shyster is yet to set a release date for the upcoming tome, but rumor has it that Paramount is already planning a major summer blockbuster based on the book.

Furthermore, a heavily abridged version, edited by former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, is expected to hit the shelves just before November.

The layman definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting different results.

That mentality, incidentally, also appears to be the cornerstone of Republican politics. We have seen it many times before: start a war or two, give tax cuts to the rich, and expect the national debt to decrease. If at first you don’t succeed…

In a recent tweet, Senator John McCain said he was “ready to sit down to do what’s right for the American people.” No, he’s not drafting a letter of resignation; he wants to “start over” the health care reform. Senator McCain’s suggestion is proof that the Republicans truly have more great ideas regarding health care reform than you can shake a teabag at.

Didn’t we just spend an entire year hashing and rehashing the disaster that is the American health care system? Were we not treated to hours of news broadcasts about village idiots in 18th century garments, gathering together to yell about socialism, Nazis, and other topics completely unrelated to the health care debate?

Did we even have a debate?

President Obama has stated that he’s eager to reach a bipartisan understanding, but is not interested in starting the reform debate over from scratch.

When John McCain was running for President in 2008, and Barack Obama announced his desire to rebuild the American health care system, McCain was quick to point out that the Republicans, too, had ideas for health care reform. Now, after a year of reform debates, it seems evident that the primary “idea” they have is to oppose whatever the Democrats are suggesting.

I can see why the concept of starting over from the beginning would seem logical to Senator McCain. For one thing, he gets hired elected for six years at a time. What’s another year to him to piss away on going over the same arguments for the umpteenth time? It would also be tremendously convenient for the GOP to still have the teabagger movement be in full steam when the elections roll around this fall. I can already envision the Republican campaign ads, declaring that it’s “your last chance to stop this insane health reform.”

A successful health care rehaul would simultaneously be the best thing to happen to this country in a long time, and the worst thing to happen to the GOP. I’m not surprised that they would be eager to put the train back at the station.

Blog bloggety blog.

I’m sure there are few things more boring than reading a blogger write about blogging (unless you’re a blogger yourself), but here goes anyway.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that a blogger whose blog I like to blog – err, read – had added me to his blogroll. A blogroll is, as you may well know, a list of other blogs that a blogger reads and recommends to others. So this guy, who is a terrific writer and satirist, added me to his list. I was surprised, and flattered, since my blog is hardly the sizzling hub of the universe.

Yet, about a week ago, I noticed he had removed me from the list.

I don’t touch my blogroll very often. I usually add blogs to it when the mood hits me, but other than that, I rarely mess with it. It’s not an all-inclusive list of blogs I visit, anyway. It’s just a few names dropped for others to perhaps check out. So blogs tend to stay on that list for quite a while.

I was baffled as to why my site made such a short-lived appearance on his blogroll. This vexed me terribly. I sought an answer by meditating, hiking the Appalachian Trail, and consulting Tibetan monks, yet the reason for my dismissal was too elusive.

As cold sweat lined the wrinkles on my forehead, and creatures from the beyond visited my mind in the quiet of the night, I pondered this question: was it something I said?

I tend to speak my mind. I speak it, I change it, and then I speak it again. It would not greatly surprise me if I ruffled some feathers in the process, especially with some of my political opinions. I also don’t refer to unbecoming words by their first letters – I simply do not see the point. Perhaps it can be too much for some people. In fact, I’m sure it is.

When someone adds us to their blogroll, or friends’ list, or contacts, we don’t very often wonder why. I guess it’s self-explanatory: who wouldn’t want to know us? However, being removed from a list of 800 friends on Facebook can still feel like a slap in the face. Before the Internet, before social networking, if you wanted to not associate with a person any longer, you simply stopped calling them, or writing them, and stopped answering their calls or letters. You no longer popped in for a visit, and if you bumped into them on the street, Saturday was never “good for you” – neither was any other day.

Nowadays, rejection is much more proactive. Relationship statuses change from “married” to “it’s complicated,” and then “divorced” or “single.” Perhaps the reason it’s such a personal affront is because it’s so obviously impersonal. It’s not just between you and them; the whole world becomes privy to that change of status.

Successful bloggers, who have been keeping a blog for a long time, have accumulated subscribers, some of which may have become contacts, or even friends. I would imagine that such success would grant one with at least some confidence. A sense of security; the knowledge that even if one person removes you from his or her virtual life, there are others who still want what you provide.

For a writer, I think, who has not garnered such a following and success, there is a degree of danger in allowing oneself to believe that one is not one’s only audience.

According to CNN, Dr. Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s personal physician on the night of his death, is being sought by law enforcement, as the prosecutors in Los Angeles are preparing to file criminal charges against him.

It’s not that the good doctor is missing, exactly. According to his lawyer, he is eager to cooperate, much like he was immediately after Jackson was pronounced dead after a drug overdose, and Dr. Murray could not be reached. Once again, he is eager to help the police, but there’s just one little snag: Dr. Murray’s lawyer and the authorities are yet to reach an agreement on his surrender.

Yes, that’s right. We’re not kicking in doors trying to locate a manslaughter suspect. We’re talking with his lawyer about the terms under which the suspect is willing to turn himself in, so that he can cooperate with law enforcement, as he is so eager to do.

Can we do anything these days without it involving billable hours for some lawyer? If the police think this guy is guilty of manslaughter, and the prosecutor is seeking to indict him, then can’t the cops just, you know, go and find him? I’m pretty sure they used to do that.

Perhaps there’s a buff, greasy-haired bounty hunter with a video camera that we can let loose on this guy’s trail.

Immediately following the recent injury of freshly elected Republican Senator Scott Brown, there has been some speculation that the Massachusetts Senator might not be sworn in this afternoon after all. However, according to a source at the House GOP leadership, such rumors and speculations are not only premature, but entirely baseless.

“We don’t expect Senator Brown’s ceremony this afternoon to be delayed. He will be sworn in at around 5 pm, and will thereafter be able to vote on any bills that may come before the Senate,” reported an aide on the condition of anonymity.

Senator Brown was injured late Tuesday night when one of the strings that RNC Chairman Michael Steele uses to control Brown’s movements broke off. The immediate concern among his Republican constituents was that their new Senator might not be able to properly vote in the Senate in line with the party’s expectations. Our insider, however, maintains that this is not going to happen. Said the aide: “Senator Brown is eager to do as told by the party. He is looking forward to taking off his shirt and getting to work.”

In other news, at the time of this writing there is no official word on whether Brown’s daughter Ayla is still single.

I was around 29 or so when I started taking my very first college classes. The college experience is pronouncedly different, I think, when you start it ten years later than most kids who are fresh out of high school.

One thing that I found particularly interesting and delightful about the campus were the many organizations that students were running and participating in. It was inspiring to see so many young people truly involved in things that many of them were only just becoming aware of.

One such organization that repeatedly caught my eye was the campus’ “Atheist Agenda” organization. And true to their name, an agenda they did have – one that they were not shy about. Each week a new poster was hung on a wall in one of the central campus buildings. The poster was slightly different each time, but the message remained the same: there is no God, the Bible is fiction, and Christians are idiots. Not in so many words, but that was the gist of it.

I get people knocking on my door on occasion. Mormons, Jehova’s Witnesses, what-have-you. I admire their enthusiasm, but none of them get a foot inside my house, and it has nothing to do with my lack of interest in religion. In fact, I’m a fairly spiritual guy. I was raised Lutheran; I’m not a complete stranger with the Bible. But I do have a problem with others trying to shove their beliefs down my throat.

Unfortunately, for reasons I fail to comprehend, this seems to be the common approach among atheists: shove their “there is no God” message down people’s throats. It is almost as if every Christian believer they come across is a personal insult being slung their way. It is not merely enough for them that they have themselves found a dogma which does not acknowledge the existence of a deity – they have to bring everyone else on board as well. Yet, at the same time, any Watchtower-offering well-wisher that knocks on their door is told to “go sell Jesus someplace else.”

When it comes to Christians wanting to “enlist me” into their midst, at least I can understand it; Jesus told Christians to spread the word. Many of them, I think, are sincere in their belief that unless I do this or say that, I will be facing an eternity in a fire pit somewhere – and they want to save me from that. Okay, maybe I’m not buying, but at least I can appreciate their motivation for selling it.

With atheists, I don’t get it at all. Why is it so important that I see things their way? Furthermore, why is it necessary to literally attack a religion for the purpose of denying it?

I joined the Atheist Agenda’s website out of curiosity. One of the first things I posted in their forums about was the weekly poster. I suggested to them that spewing insults at Christians on that poster, not to mention occasionally defacing “pro-Christian” posters elsewhere, was not doing their “agenda” any favors. If you want people to hear your point of view, don’t try to outshout them. You can shout louder, they will hear less, and all you get for your troubles is a sore throat, and a lousy reputation.

Another thing I asked them was, what exactly was the point of the annual “pornography for Bibles” event. Each year, the organization set up an event where they handed out pornographic material in exchange for Bibles.

I honestly did not understand the point. Or, rather, I did, but I was hoping there was more to it than just going for cheap shock value. Judging by the response I got from the organization, cheapness was precisely at the heart of it. Cheapness and lack of real ideas. Ideologically speaking, these guys were shooting fish in a barrel, blindfolded. Any fish they were hitting were dead already.

Changing teams doesn’t mean you’re playing a different game. If you want people to subscribe to your beliefs, as opposed to those offered by others, then you better have something deeper running under your idealism than just going for shock value. Because the guy at the door will see right through you, and will close the door in your face.

Trust me.