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Gone, But Not Forgotten? What The Internet Will Look Like Under SOPA Fearsgiving Week Jesus Approves of Waterboarding Beware of Asteroids 
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Eye of NewtTuesday, Sept. 14, 2010 3:47 AMUmph. I was on a day shift yesterday for work, and back to my usual before-dawn gig today, so I'm feeling a bit whipsawed. (I usually feel this way on Monday, but that's ameliorated somewhat by having Sunday as a day off.) Newt Gingrich needs to be bitchslapped for being intellectually dishonest. He apparently can't figure out why President Obama would speak out against Pastor Terry Jones' 'Burn a Quran' event, but not object to the proposed Park51 Center near 9/11's 'ground zero.' It's been nine frackin' years since the terrorist attack that launched us into two wars and implemented a massive, unchecked bureaucracy called Homeland Security (done on the watch of people who are supposedly against 'big government' and intrusion into people's lives). Can we grow up now? We acknowledge it was a horrible event. We understand it made us feel vulnerable. But every day we live in gibbering fear of the Islamic fundamentalist boogeyman, whether it's in the form of Obama-is-a-secret-Muslim rumors, screaming hissy-fits about a proposed community center in a building that has stood empty for nearly a decade in a run-down neighborhood, nutjob pastors planning to burn Qurans, or that Shari'a Law is Coming To Your Neighborhood ... just makes the terrorists laugh and smile, because we keep admitting they scare the fuck out of us, that we're afraid of what they might do, that we're afraid they're already here and hiding among us. And we're seeing the cost, not only in the terrorists having invested a few hundred bucks' worth of plane tickets and 19 lives vs. 3,047 casualties on 9/11 and 4,000+ dead soldiers in Iraq and 1,000+ dead soldiers in Afghanistan, but in the country's failing infrastructure and economic woes. We have our priorities wrong; a stable infrastructure and strong economy is both defense (proof against malice) and offense (success validates our values) against terrorism - not pouring endless billions and lives into one war that has proven unwinnable by two former empires, and a second that was launched on false pretenses. Wake up. If we don't master our fear, it's certainly going to master us.
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