Shut up, Newt!

This whole "Ground Zero Mosque" debate is out of control. For a start, as Keith Olbermann points out in the video clip pasted below, it's neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero. Sometimes the left needs a Fox-style attack dog to point out obvious truths that get lost when the Gingriches, Palins, and Becks of the political world start fulminating.

Olbermann begins by quoting Martin Niemöller, a Dachau survivor who had at first supported the Nazis (text here from Wikipedia):

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."

Sitting across the Atlantic, I am (yet again) disappointed and saddened by the Republican rhetoric of hate on this issue.

But there's always The Daily Show to brighten things up. John Oliver asked the other night why they weren't stopping Catholic churches from building next to playgrounds....

Olbermann:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38730223/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann/

Washington Post today on the view from NYC:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/19/AR2010081906580.html?hpid=topnews