Rabbi, Run

In Portland visiting my mom again, I picked up a copy of "The Jewish Review," a paper with which I'd not been familiar. In it, there's an article that sheds much light on the non-mosque at non-ground-zero question. Based on a speech in Portland by a Rabbi Michael Paley (referred to in the article as "one of the 50 most influential rabbis in America") it revealed several things I'd not known; and, living in NYC and a friend of Faisal Rauf, the rabbi ought to be a reliable source.



There was also this:

Assuming the rabbi isn't a liar (after all, I've been told that all Jews are America-hating collaboraters with our enemies) it sheds some light that I, for one, had not seen in other media: the origin of the idea, the fact that there'd been a prayer center there that pre-dated 9/11 by twenty years.

It sort of puts the lie to the Newtonian "triumphalism" meme, doesn't it? Or so you'd think, in a fact-based world. A world that doesn't exist in the penumbra of Fox "news" and the teabagging RWS™. A world in which there'd be half a chance of surviving. A world long-since lost to the most crazed among us, and their chosen leaders.