Burn This Book, Con'd.

With the Crazy Cap'n. Crunch pastor from Gainesville teetering from yes to no to maybe* on whether or not he'll light the Bonfire of His Vanities, the Ocala (Florida) Star-Banner reports, "Westboro Baptist Church, the small Topeka, Kan., church that pickets funerals of American soldiers to spread its message that God is punishing the country for being tolerant of homosexuals, has vowed to hold a Quran burning if Gainesville's Dove World Outreach Center calls its off." Here's the Gainesville Sun story. ...

* AP: "Negotiations between a local Muslim cleric and the leader of a tiny Florida church who had threatened to publicly burn copies of Islam's holy text left the heated debate in a state of confusion with the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks a day away."

He clearly, clearly lied to us. -- Terry Jones, on Florida Imam Muhammad Musri

And The Tennessean reports that the Rev. Bob Old, a "longtime-Baptist minister ... plans to set fire to a Quran on Saturday at his home and then post a video of the burning book online. And if he had his way, there would be no Muslims in America":

If they want to have their religion, they can have it somewhere else.
-- Bob Old

... Chip off the Old Blockhead. Gainesville Sun Update: "A leading national minister and the adult son of Dove World Outreach Center Senior Pastor Terry Jones said they do not expect him to burn copies of the Quran on Saturday at the church in northwest Gainesville.... The younger Jones appeared in front of reporters with a gun on his right hip Friday morning...."

Constant Weader: am I the only one to think the real reason Terry & the Disciples won't be burning any holy books is this? -- Gainesville Sun: "The city of Gainesville ... will send Terry Jones ... a bill for the estimated tens of thousands of dollars it will cost to police the area if the church goes through with its plan...."

Damien Cave of the New York Times, on Gainesville: "... the people of this youthful city in central Florida are taking [Jones'] actions personally, with anger and heartbreak, as one of their neighbors drags their hometown into nearly nonstop news coverage and infamy. Gainesville, after all, is a university town that until a few months ago was best known for producing college football champions, Gatorade and rockers like Tom Petty. Educated and progressive, with a gay mayor and a City Commission made up entirely of Democrats, Gainesville is a sprawling metropolis of 115,000 people."

AP Standards guy Tom Kent sent a memo to staff outlining the Associated Press's policy on coverage of this story. Via Think Progress.

AP policy is not to provide coverage of events that are gratuitously manufactured to provoke and offend. -- Tom Kent, Standards Editor

Follow the Money

CBS News: "Terry Jones ... runs a church that spends most of its money on administrative expenses and operates a furniture business out his church.... The Dove World Church is for sale for 2.9 million." Terry & his wife Sylvia are the principals in several other businesses. And the church also lost a chunk of its local tax-exempt status this year. ...

... Reader Lisa pointed me to this more extensive post in the DailyKos that demonstrates how the church appears to be a front for the Jones' businesses. CW: I wouldn't go nearly as far as the exuberant poster does in her assumptions about the financial co-mingling & con-artist charges, but the raw data she (or he) provides make it pretty clear that the Rev. Terry has cheated on his local taxes & is way busier making money in various shabby enterprises than he is in ministering to his tiny flock.

Meaningless Aside. Matt Lewis of Politics Daily: one of the Rev. Terry's high school classmates (Cape [Girardeau, Missouri- Central High, Class of '69) was Rush Limbaugh. CW: I'm sure Terry & Rush will have lots to chat about at the reunion.

News Coverage of the News Coverage

Brian Stetler of the New York Times signals that it's time for the media to commence its ritual self-analysis. Stetler looks at the media's role in promoting the Koran-burning story & examines how & why the story mushroomed into an international affair into which even the POTUS was drawn. CW: fortunately, the Westboro loonies will give Stetler a chance to write a follow-up piece.

Roy Greenslade of The Guardian takes about the same tack & comes to the same conclusion as does Stetler: it's not our fault.

James Poniewozik of Time is less forgiving. In his view, not only did the media go nuts over the nuts, they allowed Sarah Palin & Co. to promote a false equivalency between burning the Koran & building a religious center: "it's not as if there's an argument that Koran-burning would be more sensitive a few blocks away."

AND the Government Finds a Book to Burn. New York Times: "Defense Department officials are negotiating to buy and destroy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of an Afghan war memoir they say contains intelligence secrets, according to two people familiar with the dispute. The publication of “Operation Dark Heart,” by Anthony A. Shaffer, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, has divided military security reviewers and highlighted the uncertainty about what information poses a genuine threat to security."

Japanese Model Beats U.S. Rube Goldberg Mock-up

Paul Krugman: "Japan’s performance has been disappointing but not disastrous. And given the policy agenda of America’s right, that’s a performance we may wish we’d managed to match."

What the Japanese didn't have was John Boehner, Mitch McConnell & Jim DeMint. They've never had to look forward to Sen. Rand Paul or possibly even Sen. Sharron Angle.

Surely the main reason our own government did too little in early 2008 was the fault of Republicans. We all remember those closed-door sessions in which, presumably, President Obama tried to explain prudent fiscal policy to Sens. Collins & Snowe. We all remember the Party of No, with the exception of the somewhat confused Ladies of Maine (& then-Republican Sen. Specter), standing firm against sensible economic policy.

Ezra Klein wrote a good post the other day on how much better the stimulus package (& the healthcare bill) would have been if not for the filibuster. He used the apt term "legislating to the lowest common denominator," & there he referred to the Democratic leadership's having to kowtow to ConservaDems' every whim.

As for the handful of House Republicans who voted for the stimulus package, their party's membership rewarded them with threats of primary defeats in 2010.*

I'm surely happy to see that somebody in the Obama Administration figured out Democrats shouldn't be running against Bush, but against Boehner, McConnell, Ryan, Cantor, & the rest of the current crop of economic knuckleheads. Let's hope the Democrats can act like an organized political party for the next two months (okay, fat chance!) & show disengaged American voters the horrors and hardship they will bring down upon themselves if they reward the Party of No -- who brought on, then exascerbated the economic crisis -- with their votes.

* CW: Oops! Exactly zero Republican House members voted for the stimulus bill. It was the eight Republican House votes for a climate bill that engendered the backlash & threats:

Burn This Book

Gail Collins writes about a minister in Gainesville, Florida, whom she refuses to name so as not to give him more publicity, who is following "the theory that the best way to honor Americans who died at the hands of religious extremists is to do something that is both religious and extreme." Collins notes that "the candidates running in this year’s elections seem to be superquiet."

The Constant Weader finds some politicians & Gainesville residents with guts:

If you read the Gainesville Sun, you'll find out that many people in Gainesville are rising to the occasion & condemning the crazy Koran burners. Wednesday, 300 people opposing the Koran-burning showed up for an interfaith prayer service at the local Episcopal church. Christian, Muslim, Jewish & Greek Orthodox clerics spoke in solidarity against Terry Jones' planned "protest." Video from the Sun:

Clergy gather at Gainesville's City Hall to speak out against the Koran burning. Gainesville Sun video:

The paper's letters to the editor are pretty much exclusively from Gainesville citizens who are appalled by the Koran-burning plans.

And some Florida politicians are speaking out. The mayor of Gainesville has expressed his opposition from the beginning. Mayor Craig Lowe has also been a victim of Terry Jones' theology of hate: Jones protested Lowe's election because Lowe is gay. The catchy protest slogan: "no homo mayo."

Gov. Charlie Crist, running for Senate as an independent, calls the Koran-burning "offensive" and says he "strongly agrees" with Gen. Petraeus that the Koran-burners are putting American soldiers at risk. Not a peep from Crist's opponents, as far as I can tell.

Some national politicians have spoken out. Ron Paul, who of course is up for re-election to Congress, has blasted Jones. And, oh dear, Sarah Palin calls Jones' plans "insensitive ...  much like building a mosque at Ground Zero." That's a direct quote from Palin's Facebook media outlet. (Oh, and sorry, no link.)

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the Taliban are reading the Gainesville paper & Palin's Facebook page. As long as the media push the story of one Florida nut case & his band of 50 dopey disciples, Jones remains a good sales tool for radical Muslims -- exactly the folks Jones claims he is protesting. Like most crazy people, Jones is evidently incapable of appreciating irony.

Also, see a couple of very good comments from Karen Garcia of New Paltz (#1) & Gemli of Boston (#3).

President Obama talks to George Stephanopoulos of ABC News about the planned Koran-burning:

     ... Washington Post story here.

Reuters, related: "India led calls on Thursday for the United States to intervene to halt a small church's plan to burn copies of the Koran in commemoration of the September 11 attacks and urged a media blackout to calm tensions." ...

... AP, related: "Religious and political leaders across the Muslim world ... have called on the church to call off the plan, warning it would lead to violence against Americans."

... Gainesville Sun Update: "The city of Gainesville's top administrator said Wednesday that he will send Terry Jones, the senior pastor at the Dove World Outreach Center, a bill for the estimated tens of thousands of dollars it will cost to police the area if the church goes through with its plan to burn the Quran on Saturday." ...

** Huh? AP Update: "Pastor Terry Jones said Thursday that he decided to cancel his [koran-burning] protest because the leader of a planned Islamic Center near ground zero has agreed to move its controversial location. The agreement couldn't be immediately confirmed." ...

     ... NBC News Update: "But sources close to the imam behind the New York mosque denied any deal had been struck." ...

     ... New York Times story here. ...

     ... Change of Heart (not to suggest he has one). AP: "An anti-Islamic preacher backed off and then threatened to reconsider burning the Quran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, angrily accusing a Muslim leader of lying to him Thursday with a promise to move an Islamic center and mosque away from New York's ground zero. The imam planning the center denied there was ever such a deal."

... Gainesville Sun: "A Dove World Outreach Center sign on Southwest 13th Street announcing its 'International Burn a Koran Day' was painted over Wednesday evening by Alachua County sheriff's deputies. The sign was put up on a billboard on property adjacent to the Hoda Center Academy, a mosque and Islamic center, under an agreement between the property owner and church officials."

On Background. Wall Street Journal: Gen. David Petraeus, "the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said the planned burning of Qurans on Sept. 11 by a small Florida church could put the lives of American troops in danger and damage the war effort.... [He] said the Taliban would exploit the demonstration for propaganda purposes...."

AP: "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday called a Florida church's threat to burn copies of the Muslim holy book to mark the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks a 'disrespectful, disgraceful act.' Others in the Obama administration weighed in against the proposed burning, including Attorney General Eric Holder, who called it idiotic and dangerous. A State Department spokesman branded the planned protest 'un-American' while other officials warned that it could threaten U.S. troops, diplomats and travelers overseas."

New York Times: "Prominent Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders held an extraordinary 'emergency summit' meeting in the capital on Tuesday to denounce what they called 'the derision, misinformation and outright bigotry' aimed at American Muslims during the controversy over the proposed Islamic community center near ground zero.... Some of the same religious leaders later met with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to urge him to prosecute religious hate crimes aggressively."

Addendum

"The housekeeper noticed a foul smell coming from the chimney." My friend Lulu Moretti has remarked on media coverage of the Case of the Right Rev. Cap'n Kangaroo. Her observations, in part: "... our media love a good story (though I don't think they spent enough time on the doctor who tried to enter her ex-lover's house via the chimney)." Ah, the Constant Weader pleads guilty as charged. Tardy though it may be, here's a link to a Time article on a summertime Santa story gone awfully wrong.