Today’s Freakshow Dispatch

by digby

To an audience of about 50 people — fully half of whom were members of the press — Pastor Bill Keller launched his 9-11 Christian Center at ground zero this morning with a fiery sermon targeting Muslims and Mormons as hell-bound followers of false faiths. Keller took aim in particular at Glenn Beck, a Mormon, and Imam Rauf, the organizer of the Park51 Islamic community center. Keller, an extremist Internet evangelist from Florida, spoke at a drab ballroom of the Marriott hotel two blocks south of ground zero for the launch of his Christian Center, a response to Park51. He told the audience, which included a couple of 9/11 Truther protesters, that he is scouting three possible locations for a permanent church. Keller regularly assails Muslims as pedophiles and attacks Mormons and gay people. But his church has drawn no objections from opponents of the mosque who have consistently argued that the neighborhood around ground zero is sacred ground.

Meanwhile, I hear that The Man Called Petraeus has said that “Burn The Koran Day” will endanger the troops in the field. I wonder if anyone asked him whether Mosque burnings, Islamophobic wingnuts on TV or a national crusade against a Muslim community center in New York might also be a little bit provocative? If silly stuff like this from the lovely patriot Pam Atlas got out of hand, it couldn’t exactly be helpful:

I’m not big on the “endangering the troops” excuse for shutting down political discourse even when it’s as stupid as this. But I do think it’s just a tad inconsistent for the right wing to deliver huge propaganda victories to Islamic extremists after having viciously attacked the left for years for being objectively pro-terrorist. You can’t have it both ways.