Open Thread

Ishtar – I make reasonable threats and always always follow up on them. Stuff like taking away their favorite toy for the night or no book before bedtime. Another parenting pet peeve I have is when people throw around all kinds of threats and then never follow up. Their kids usually act like little terrorists.

I don’t do physical punishment, notwithstanding how I was dealt with as a kid (for the worst offenses, I was instructed to go out in the woods and cut a sapling and bring it back to my father, whereupon he would proceed to administer the designated number of lashes on my backside).

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Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said on Wednesday that conservative criticism of plans to develop a mosque and Islamic community center in close proximity to “Ground Zero” in New York City is “one of the most disgraceful things that I’ve heard.”

“I don’t know how many of you have been to New York, but if a building is two blocks away from anything, you can’t see it,” he said, according to the State Journal-Register.

“It’s a community center. They’re going to have a gym. They’re going to have point guards. Muslim point guards,” Franken said, to laughter and applause.

“They (Republicans) do this every two years. They try to find a wedge issue, and they try to work it.”

Franken also reportedly called out former House Speaker Newt Gingrich specifically for incendiary comments about the proposed religious center earlier this week.

“The most offensive thing I heard was from Newt Gingrich: ‘We can’t let the Nazis put up a building next to the Holocaust Museum,” asserted the Democratic Senator. “That’s equating all Muslims with Al Quaida. George W. Bush said Al Quaida is ‘a perversion of Islam.'”

Gingrich analogized building the religious establishment near “Ground Zero” to Nazis putting up signs close to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. on Monday’s edition of “Fox and Friends.”

In sharing his take on the matter, Franken told his audience, “I lost a friend in 9-11 and I understand the feelings of the families.”

quote:
I’ve been here over 10 years now and love it today as much as I did when I first arrived. And this year I’ve been to the Empire State building twice…one time with friends from Germany and another with friends from Seattle.

To see their faces when we got to the top was all the impetus I needed to realize what this mean to them and what it once and still means to me.

UGH! someone gag me with a spoon right NOW

*rob*

“but that isn’t NYC’s fault.”

“You need to recharge and find that magic again. NYC is all about re-inventing yourself and constantly needing to change just as the city does.”

Agreed. Just recognize that it’s harder for some people to do. I’ve been in NYC since ’96 and I was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when I got here. EVERYTHING amazed me. Now, 14 years later, I’m just like, ‘yeah, it’s home.’ I don’t sing it’s praises, but like I said before, please don’t drop me off in the middle of Kansas or Utah. There isn’t enough anti-depressants in the world to get me through that!