Don’t you just love seeing the American stupid come out? Not that it has ever been away in the past two years. But every month it seems, some new clamorous scandal threatens to make people hyperventilate and burst blood vessels on live TV. Those people are always in a snit about something.

See – someone bought and is renovating one of those buildings in downtown NYC that has been vacant since 9-11. This should be a great thing, as that whole area is still dead except for street vendors and that nine year old hole in the ground (remember, kiddies, Dubai put up the world’s tallest building in six years). There is a new subway station coming on Fulton Street and other new buildings starting, but they are still a long way off from realization. So is this new building, years before it is complete and occupied. And the building? The renovation of the old Burlington Coat Factory store into an Islamic Community Center and mosque. (Cue everyone’s horrified gasping.)

It’s called a “slap in the face”, a “desecration”, “immoral”, “insulting” and an affront to those who lost their lives on that hallowed ground.

Okay – about the “hallowed ground” stuff? There is a strip club nearby, numerous bars and a good amount of “seedy” to make you think twice about walking the “hallowed ground” at night. And they have always been there. Also – if it’s hallowed, then why not a religious building? The victims included people from 90 different countries and a good number of them were Muslim. Don’t they have a right to mourn or acknowledge their dead? Though that is not a typical Muslim approach to death, but this is America and we are the Romans. If you can’t do something gaudy – why do it at all?

Unfortunately the real reason for building the center in the vicinity of the old World Trade Center – or “Ground Zero” for everyone who doesn’t live and work every day in the city – is because it was cheap real estate. Tax breaks abound and everyone is looking to unload those buildings. See? Just business. Capitalism. The Muslims are taking advantage of the Free Market!! The nut jobs really need to get onto that issue before some foreign country we don’t like starts buying all our things… again.

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