Park 51 Developer Won't Budge.

Sharif El-Gamal, the developer behind the Park 51 Community Centre (also known as the Ground Zero Mosque in right wing circles) has refused to consider building anywhere else and had turned on politicians for making this into such a huge issue.

I am surprised at the way that politics is being played in 2010. There are issues that are affecting our country which are real issues. Unemployment, poverty, the economy. And it's a really sad day for America when our politicians choose to look at a Constitutional right and use that as a basis for their elections.

He is, of course, completely correct. The Republicans are cynically using this as wedge issue and a whole slew of Democratic cowards are falling into line behind them feigning false outrage.

The toxic right-wing campaign to impose a Muslim-free zone around Ground Zero intensified today, while Democrats -- following in the cowardly footsteps of Senate Majority "Leader" Harry Reid,whose book is one of the most ironically titled in history -- ran faster and faster away from the controversy. New York Governor David Paterson made it known that he wants to meet with Park 51's developers to encourage them to move to a new site. One Democratic official, Rep. Michael Arcuri of New York,actually attacked his GOP challenger, Richard Hanna, for having bravely broken with his own party to support the project; Arcuri's Gingrich-replicating attacks caused Hannah, one of the few Republicans in the nation to have defended Park 51, to reverse position by arguing today that it should move. And it is hard to imagine anyone surpassing Rep. Anthony Weiner in the cowardice department after theunbelievably vapid, incoherent letter he issued, ostensibly setting forth his views on this matter (stringing together words randomly chosen from the dictionary would likely create more meaningful sentences than the ones Weiner wrote).

I am especially disappointed in Weiner as he is a politician that I usually have a lot of time for. But, the letter he has sent simply couldn't be more vacuous.

Tags: Sharif El-Gamal, Park 51, Ground Zero Mosque