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On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, George Bush, famously or infamously, had to be instructed on the existence of and differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims. He had no idea--despite centuries of warfare between the two sects--that there was a difference.

Sadly, that cultural ignorance of most Americans is still being played and preyed upon when fostering fear of Islam here, especially in regards to the Cordoba House. As has been previously reported, the Cordoba House is being built by Sufi Muslims, a mystical sub-sect of the Shia Muslims and considered apostates of Wahabbist Sunni sub-sect of al Qaeda.

Fareed Zakaria highlights further proof of the al Qaeda hatred of the Sufis with the July attack on a Lahore, Pakistan Sufi shrine during prayers, which killed 41 and injured 175 more. What gets lost in the amped-up "fear of the Other" rhetoric of Gingrich and Palin and driven by media like Fox News, is that this is not a battle of Islam vs. the US.

Why would al Qaeda attack a holy place at a time of prayer? Because it is a Sufi shrine, part of a sect that al Qaeda despises and regards as a deadly foe in the real battle it is fighting, the battle within Islam.

The Sufis are a sector of Islam originating in South Asia. They're all about mysticism, love, brotherhood and devotion, with very little attention to dogma. They believe in saints, shrines, music, dance, and follow a very liberal interpretation of the Koran.

Sufi poets routinely extol the virtues of wine and song, both forbidden in the purer versions of Islam. Sufism has always believed in tolerance towards other people and religion, and in peace. You can see why al Qaeda views it as its mortal enemy. The more Muslims accept some version of Sufi Islam, the more dangerous for al Qaeda and its extreme jihadist philosophy.

It can't be said enough, with all the misinformation out there: Islam doesn't hate us. This is a battle between al Qaeda and everyone else that doesn't follow their own narrow vision of Islam, which includes other Muslims. The opposition to the Cordoba House is exactly what al Qaeda wants to see.

And how sad is it that George W. Bush eventually came around to understanding this divide and was more moderate in his statements about the Muslim world than the current crop of Republican leaders?

TBogg: Paranoid Anger Bear Andrew Breitbart's hatred extends to more than just negroes. Update: Maybe they grew a pair

onegoodmove: Links with your coffee...

Its my Right to be Left of the Center: Grayson: May God have mercy on your souls

Circle Jerk at the Square Dance: What new words are we creating in our political tweets?

Class Acts: The Prohibition Blues

HOLY CRAP: Changing the script...Scientology's new enemy...GOP Reps align with Muslim nations...Believer Beware at TBN...10 things Christians and Atheists can and must agree on...Breitbart to repackage "Birth of A Nation" as Obama documentary...Just Crap...Racial tolerance...Cheap Grace...Sectarian Supremacism...Holy Images

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As many of you know, conservatives hate government because it interferes with their precious free market 'GOD', so when they actually control the government they hire unqualified sycophants, who by their very nature undermine the posts they are given because of their incompetence and hatred for the government they draw a paycheck from. They then will use their position like an ideological club as much as possible. This comes in very handy when the administration changes hands, because then they can work to get rid of everything Democratic.

Monica Goodling was a powerful symbol of of the Bush administration. She was given a very powerful position with none of the basic qualifications for the job, just like Heckvuajob Brownie. In her case, she graduated from Pat Robertson's Regent University, and because she's a right-wing conservative hack, she got hired to assist Alberto Gonzalez at the DOJ with the power to hire and fire people. How is that possible, you say?

About a week ago, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick noted a tidbit that the rest of us missed: TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Regent University boasts that 150 of its graduates, including former top DoJ aide Monica Goodling, are serving in some capacity in the Bush administration. Lithwick noted that this is “a huge number for a 29-year-old school.” That’s certainly true; it’s also a huge number for a small right-wing college led by a radical televangelist who believes Americans brought 9/11 upon themselves.

George W. Bush is the answer. If you forgot who Monica is, here's how she abused the power she was given. And of course she acted like a typical Grover Norquist clone and instructed the DOJ's attorneys to delete and destroy documents.

Turley and Olbermann discussed Alberto and Monica here. (Click to see video)

If McCain had won the election, he would have continued hiring incompetents throughout his administration because having a jackass fail in a key job only helps push the conservative meme that the government is useless and should not be involved in the actual job of governing. I was wondering if David Axelrod and his crew have made a real effort to purge these Heritage/Robertson imbeciles from their ranks?

Here's an example of what conservative governance is all about and what can happen if you don't clean house.

Hullabaloo writes about Bush-era embeds.

During the US Attorney scandal many of us wondered if it would result in a bunch of GOP operatives remaining burrowed in the Justice Department because the Democrats would fear being criticized for "politicizing" the department if they tried to fire them. Republicans, having fully mastered "I know you are but what am I" politics can always be counted upon to cry victim even when the turned tables are of a completely different type and the hapless Democrats end up chasing their tails because they can't figure out how to parry it. It was predictable that, perversely, there would be quite a few wingnut holdovers after the scandal completely safe in their jobs.

It turns out there are burrowers and one of them has left the department and immediately gone to the press to spill breathless tales of racism in the Obama/Holder DOJ -- toward white people, naturally:

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BlogHer: Manifesto – I am not a "brand."

No More Mister Nice Blog: Ayn Rand's Miracle Elixir.

The Happiest Place on Earth: Florida public schools being "sponsored" by churches and gun shops, and conservative hatred for teachers.

Sans Everything: Conservatism as a family affair.

Text & History: Why the Supreme Court’s decision in Rent-a-Center v. Jackson matters.

Lance Mannion: Asperger's.

Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com.

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Last night Bill O'Reilly announced he was doing an admirable thing -- covering the legal expenses of Fred Phelps victim Albert Snyder -- and in doing so, seemed to express an admirable sentiment: hate talk is a bad thing, and all sides should eschew it.

Except, of course, by Bill's lights, the flow of hate is equal on both sides:

There is far too much hatred in America. That's obvious. It comes from both sides. The Michigan militia and the Westboro Baptist Church are far-right nuts, but there are just as many far-left idiots doing vile things.

Thirty-eight-year-old Norman Leboon has been charged with threatening to kill Republican Congressman Eric Cantor. Apparently Leboon wants to kill Cantor and his family and is now being held without bail. It looks like this guy is simply nuts. Ideology might not be in play.

However, a brick was thrown through the window of the Michigan Republican Party headquarters on Monday. Obviously that's political.

The point is that the situation in America is reaching critical mass. There is far too much hatred in the air.

The press is obviously pumping up inappropriate things that happen on the right and pretty much ignoring hateful things on the left. Bernie Goldberg and I established that on Monday.

But every member of the media should condemn all hate speech and violent activity. It is simply un-American.

Then O'Reilly had Laura Ingraham come on to point out that yeah, those left-wingers can be every bit as nasty as the right-wingers.

Tell you what, Bill and Laura. Come and talk to us again about how nasty and wrong hateful talk from the left is when:

-- A liberal walks into a church and opens fire on the congregation because they're all a bunch of conservatives and he wants to kill as many right-wingers as he can.

-- A liberal walks into another church and shoots a doctor in the head.

-- A liberal shoots three police officers who come to his door because he fears the president is going to take his guns away.

-- A liberal walks into the Holocaust Museum and shoots a guard because he hates Jews and believes it's time to start a race war.

-- A liberal walks into the Pentagon and opens fire because he believes the government is plotting against its citizens.

-- A pack of gun-loving liberals forms a plot to kill law-enforcement officers and start a revolution.

See, that isn't happening. But it is happening with characters from the right, opening fire on various perceived "liberal" targets, law enforcement officers, and government employees. (In order, they've happened in Knoxville, in Wichita, in Pittsburgh, in Washington, twice, and this past weekend in the Midwest.)

No doubt there are some liberals who use ugly and sometimes even violent rhetoric. But there's a big difference between what's actually happening on the ground in terms of the behavior of right-wingers and left-wingers when it comes to acting on the rhetoric: The fanatics on the right are decidedly more violent, and act out violently with much greater frequency.

Why is that? Well, there are two big differences between left-wing and right-wing hate talk, one qualitative, the other quantitative:

-- Right-wing talk is decidedly more violent and openly eliminationist -- which is to say, it speaks more openly about eliminating entire blocs of their fellow Americans, and it does so by harkening to violent themes with much greater frequency.

-- The sheer volume of right-wing hate talk is so much greater. Not only are there more examples, by an exponential factor, of right-wing hatefulness, but the talk is emanating from the upper reaches of the right-wing hierarchy: on TV and radio talk shows with hosts who spew eliminationist hatred daily to audiences of millions daily, and among politicians who represent the supposed mainstream of officialdom, and thus lend their imprimatur to such behavior.

The talk shows, in particular, are a real problem. Especially when you have hosts who repeatedly call someone a "baby killer" day in and day out.

Now that's hate talk. But of course, Bill O'Reilly will never admit to that.

(h/t nr for the graphic)

OK, let's have some fun. There's a new Harris poll that was just released and the results are pretty hysterical. It's not scientific, but based on who decided to take it online during the height of the health care debate, so take it for what it is:

On the heels of health care, a new Harris poll reveals Republican attitudes about Obama: Two-thirds think he's a socialist, 57 percent a Muslim—and 24 percent say "he may be the Antichrist."

To anyone who thinks the end of the health-care vote means a return to civility, wake up.

Obama Derangement Syndrome—pathological hatred of the president posing as patriotism—has infected the Republican Party. Here's new data to prove it:

67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist. The belief that Obama is a “domestic enemy” is widely held—a sign of trouble yet to come.

57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president" 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did" Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist." These numbers all come from a brand-new Harris poll, inspired in part by my new book Wingnuts. It demonstrates the cost of the campaign of fear and hate that has been pumped up in the service of hyper-partisanship over the past 15 months. We are playing with dynamite by demonizing our president and dividing the United States in the process. What might be good for ratings is bad for the country.

• Michelle Goldberg: What the Polls Really Show The poll, which surveyed 2,230 people right at the height of the health-care reform debate, also clearly shows that education is a barrier to extremism. Respondents without a college education are vastly more likely to believe such claims, while Americans with college degrees or better are less easily duped. It's a reminder of what the 19th-century educator Horace Mann once too-loftily said: "Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge."

The poll was based on John Avlon's new book: Wingnuts. If nothing else it speaks to the people that are clicking through and then taking the poll. Clearly there is a derangement syndrome going on in America today. We know this by the behavior we see everyday and the actions...oh...like...cutting someone's gas line. Things like that.

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President Obama ignored warnings not to appear at the National Prayer Breakfast today, since it was organized by fundamentalist religionists whose animus towards not just him but all progressives has been all too obvious for years. But he did anyway -- and, as Sam Stein at HuffPo reports, actually managed to deliver an important message about the critical role of civility in a democratic society.

The main point was that right-wing nutcases, and their frothing about Obama's supposed foreignness and radicalism and hatred of Christianity, make it impossible to even have a rational discussion:

Obama: Civility also requires relearning how to disagree without being disagreeable -- understanding, as President [Kennedy] said, 'Civility is not a sign of weakness.' Now I am the first to confess I am not always right. Michelle will testify to that. But surely, you can question my policies without questioning my faith. Or for that matter, my citizenship.

No doubt, the talkers at Fox will take this as evidence that he hates the "jes' folks" who populate the Tea Parties.

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Spencer Ackermann tried this morning on Morning Joe to bring common sense to the debate over the fate of the would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He rightly points out that the "freak-out factor" that a situation like this occurs.

Spencer: I really don't understand the argument because every single time we have a new emergency, we have to forget about the hard lessons we've learned in the past about this. And then secondly, by every standard you've seen so far in every piece of reporting, the guy cooperated. He immediately said he was a member of al-Qaida. He started talking in a threatening manner about how there are other attacks coming, so I'm not really sure where we make this jump to the idea that we're not getting information from the guy.

Since he's cooperating so much, what the hell. Ship him off to Gitmo, torture the shit out of him just for the hell of it.

Pat Buchanan couldn't miss out on a chance to join in the chorus of psychopathic right-wingers who have been responding with their usual grotesque visions of xenophobic hatred after the Christmas Day failed attack on Flight 253.

Buchanan: ...frankly if that means you have to deny him pain medication because he's badly burned, I think you go ahead and do that. I'm not arguing for torture, but I am...

Spencer: You just did.

Buchanan: Nobody is, but I am arguing for hostile interrogations of this fellow, because our job is to protect American lives.It's not to make sure his Miranda rights haven't been violated.

Spencer: So you're arguing for torture but with a different euphemism for it?

Buchanan: I'm arguing for the fact that this is an enemy soldier who tried to commit a mass atrocity and the idea that you're treating him like some guy who held up a 7-11, it seems to me preposterous.

Spencer: Except for all of the hundreds of terrorists that we've convicted in federal courts over the years that were able to hold that were able to incarcerate successfully and that were able to get information out of. I mean, the fact is, al-Qaeda is a dangerous and really important threat, but they are also not a super army of supermen that have Muslim heat vision, and it's ludicrous to think that we should inflate how dangerous they are because that's exactly what they want.

Great points by Ackermann, but right-wing loons need to have al-Qaeda built up as the scary monster hiding underneath your beds, ready to strike you down if you go to sleep even for a minute. We can't even get a break from fearmongering, even during the holidays. Withholding pain meds in the way Buchanan speaks of is torture, and the guy has been singing like a canary. Still, right-wing talkers are spreading incredibly sick thoughts on our radio and TV airwaves.

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The right's latest fake controversy is what happens whenever any Democrat happens to bring up historical truths about conservatism -- like the fact that it has been on the wrong side of right and wrong for much of the nation's history. They scream and shout about how mean liberals are and then cover over these truths with a pile of afactual excrement.

Here's what upset them so. Harry Reid accurately laid out the sorry history of conservatives in America whenever important and momentous advances in civil rights and the betterment of life for all Americans happen to arise: They stick up for the forces of oppression, hatred, and economic deprivation.

"Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all Republicans have come up with is this slow down, stop everything, let's start over."

"You think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said, slow down, it's too early. Let's wait. Things aren't bad enough. When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted slow down, there will be a better day to do that. The day isn't quite right.

When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone, regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today."

The only thing right-wingers heard was that "Reid compared opponents of health-care reform to opponents of slavery."

Well, not exactly: He was pointing out that there was continuum to all of these, a common thread. That is, the opponents of health care, just like opponents of civil rights for minorities, and opponents of the vote for women, and opponents of ending slavery all had one big thing in common: They were all conservative.

Rather laughably, Sean Hannity and Karl Rove try to cover this over -- as does Michelle Malkin -- by pointing out the wonderful things Republicans have done over the decades, such as Lincoln freeing the slaves. Of course, what they don't mention is that these things were achieved by people who would today be considered liberal Republicans. Malkin also wants you to remember those Democrats who fought against civil rights: Of course, she conveniently omits the history of the Southern Strategy and the way old-line bigots like Strom Thurmond joined the GOP en masse in the 1960s and '70s, thereby transforming the Party of Lincoln into the Party of Neo-Confederates.

(Oh, and a reminder to Karl Rove, who claims that "Joe Wilson got in trouble for speaking the truth": He should ask Wilson sometime his views on Lincoln.)

And what they especially avoid confronting is that Reid is right in that opponents of ending slavery were CONSERVATIVE, and opponents of health-care reform are CONSERVATIVE. The contexts change with the shifting challenges of our respective eons, but we can always count on one thing:

When conservatives stand up to fight against common-sense advances that improve the lives of Americans, we can feel a sense of surety that history will prove them wrong. It always has in the past.

By the way, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was whining on Fox's Your World (with Eric Bolling filling in for Neil Cavuto) that Reid's remarks were "over the top" and asking him to apologize:

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Your defense of Glenn Beck is touching on AOL, but it comes up very short and very sad. You claim that the big bad lefty meanie comedians are picking on Beck even when he is sick. Well, let's get something straight. Glenn Beck is inciting violence and helping legitimizing radical militia and white nationalist movements that otherwise would still be chatting on their MySpace pages. And the hatred that he is helping to unleash on this country is indefensible.

He was the butt of a few jokes by comedians at a time that you disapprove of. OK, are you now saying that the ADL is also being mean to him when they call him the "fearmonger in chief?" Will you weep for him over that too?

What did you think of those gun-brandishing "patriots" who showed up for teabagger protests? Were you happy to see all that vitriol targeted at President Obama by a lot of clueless robots who are out their because of talkers like Beck who have only one goal in mind -- to tear down this president after Bush and conservatism tore down our country for the last eight years?

It's not as though Beck himself hasn't been demonizing people -- his McCarthyite attacks on a number of people have not only been absurdly distorted but viciously personal. And it's not as though Beck is an innocent in the media personal-attack game; indeed, you may recall that he was responsible for one of the ugliest on-air smears in broadcast history: When Beck had a falling-out with a former radio-show partner named Bruce Kelly, who became a competitor in the Phoenix market, Beck embarked on a series of dirty tricks, including an invasion of Kelly's wedding. But Beck hit a new low a little later:

The animosity between Beck and Kelly continued to deepen. When Beck and Hattrick produced a local version of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" for Halloween -- a recurring motif in Beck's life and career -- Kelly told a local reporter that the bit was a stupid rip-off of a syndicated gag. The slight outraged Beck, who got his revenge with what may rank as one of the cruelest bits in the history of morning radio. "A couple days after Kelly's wife, Terry, had a miscarriage, Beck called her live on the air and says, 'We hear you had a miscarriage,' " remembers Brad Miller, a former Y95 DJ and Clear Channel programmer. "When Terry said, 'Yes,' Beck proceeded to joke about how Bruce [Kelly] apparently can't do anything right -- about he can't even have a baby."

Two wrongs don't make a right, and here at C&L we've avoided making it personal with Beck (beyond pointing out his utter lunacy). Just because we choose to pitch clean, though, doesn't mean we much mind seeing a toxic clown like Beck face a little chin music.

Please, spare us the tears and defend somebody who truly deserves it.

John Amato...