Best New England Clam Chowder

Everyone in New England has a recipe for clam chowder. This recipe has evolved over the years. The flavor is very strong and the taste is heavenly. This photo was soft shell steamer clams. Any type of fresh clam can be used with equally tasty results. If you live on the west coast, razor clams, manila clams and gooey ducks can be used, but you’re on your own for how many to use. Manila clams are very much like littlenecks. You could probably make the whole chowder from one gooey duck.

Preparation time: Soak clams 2-3 hours, prep 1 hour

A Forward on Buying and Selecting the Best Clams:

The best clams are the clams you dig in the clam-flats at low tide. Ok. We can’t all do that. So the next best clams are the clams someone else dug that same day and they’re willing to give you some or sell them to you. The next best is a trustworthy fishmonger. I’m fortunate to have a fishmonger who digs his own clams and sells them out of his truck every Friday. Now I know fishmongers are going to say anything to get you to buy their fish, so you still have to be careful, but this old guy has been selling seafood for a long time and he has a loyal clientele, including my very seafood finicky gourmet cook cousin, so he has a good reputation.

The next best way to get clams is to pick them over yourself at a fish market where you can select the clams that look happy and healthy. If you are at a supermarket and the clams are prepackaged, you can still test them by giving a little squeeze. If the necks move, you’re ok, but you will still have to sort them individually before you steam them.  If the seafood person selects them for you ask him or her to make sure they’re alive. High volume supermarkets generally have good quality and high turn over so they’re generally pretty reliable.  I’ve only had to return clams to the supermarket once because I had so many dead clams it was disgusting, but that only happened once. If your fishmonger has more than one variety of clam ask which is the freshest or select the freshest looking variety. If you see a lot of dead clams on ice, avoid them entirely.

All clams must be alive, not just living, but very lively happy clams.  The shell should be closed tight. For soft shell “steamer” clams, if the neck is sticking out, tickle the clam, it should retract the neck and close up tight.  If the neck is limp, the poor clam is on it’s last legs. Discard it. If the shell stays open when you squeeze it, he’s dead, say a few kind words and discard it too. Test every clam you have before you steam them because a dead clam can spoil the taste of the broth and give you digestion problems.

A medium shell clam can be found in Maine. They’re called Mahogany clams. They are yellowish brown.  Mahogany clams are very inexpensive, but they have a short life and tend to spoil quickly. When I can buy them in the supermarket, many are dead on the ice, so buyer beware. I avoid them, especially when the price is too good to be true. They’re probably trying to get rid of them before they spoil.

Hard shell clams come in different sizes (and ages).  All hard shell clams should be closed up tight. If the shell moves at all when you squeeze it, don’t select it, and if you already own it, discard it before you steam them. The best hard shells are gray to grayish white in color. The youngest are called “littlenecks”. They’re about an inch to inch and a half in size. The next larger size is the “Cherry Stone”, they’re roughly 1.5 to 2.5 inches in size, and the largest size is the “Quahog”, 2.5 to 5 inches size.  There are even larger deep sea clams, but not something you’d see in the clam flats and in local markets.

(Just an aside- Quahogs were a staple of the early Native Americans in New England. They prized the purple color on the inside of the shell and made beads with the purple shell and called it wampum. The wampum beads were used as jewelry and currency because they took a lot of labor to make. When metal drills were acquired from traders, the process to make them became very efficient and the wampum beads became devalued as they became more numerous. Early settlers would buy large parcels of land in Massachusetts with a handful of wampum beads.)

Ingredients:

4 pounds of steamer clams, or 4 dozen  “Little Necks”, or 2 dozen “Quahogs”

3-4 medium red potatoes

1 large sweet onion

2 tbs butter and additional 2 tbs optional for creamy chowder

4 tbs sea salt

crushed pepper to taste

1 cup of water

1 cup of store bought clam juice

1 cup of cornmeal or polenta meal

1 cup of heavy cream (optional)

2 tbs flour (optional)

Optional- 1 strip of uncooked bacon (chopped) or 2 tbs sized cube of salt pork

Preparation Time:  2-3 hours of soaking & 1 hour of prep

Preparation:

The clams can be cleaned before they are cooked by placing them in a pot covered with water with sea salt and cornmeal. Stir and place in the fridge, or add ice cubes to keep the water cold. After about 2-3 hours they digest the cornmeal and the bellies are a white and clean. This produces a clearer broth. The only downside to this process is some flavor is lost. If the clams are freshly dug, the taste of the ocean is preserved by not cleaning them with cornmeal. If they’ve been lying around on ice in a store for a few days that fresh ocean aroma is gone by then, so you may as well feed them cornmeal. The bellies taste sweet and they aren’t as gritty.

Remove the clams from the cornmeal solution and rinse well. If they haven’t been soaked in cornmeal, give them a thorough washing to remove the residual mud and grit.

Add 1 cup of water to a large soup pot and a steam grate to keep the clams out of the water. Add the clams. Place on high heat covered. When steam forms, turn down to med-high and cook for 7-10 minutes or until the shells open. Small clams cook faster. Large clams take longer. Leave the cover slightly ajar to prevent the foam from boiling over. For chowder, undercooked clams are ok. They’ll be cooked again when the other ingredients are added.

Remove the meat from the clams being careful to retain the liquid, and set the clams aside.  If large clams are used, dice the meat into smaller portions. Steamers can be whole or separated into necks and bellies. Dice large necks if you prefer smaller pieces. The steamers have a long neck with a skin. To remove the skin pinch the clam at the base of the neck with one hand and strip the skin off with the other. The littlenecks are much easier to clean, but all clams have some skin that has to be removed.

Dice the potatoes and onion. Slowly drain off the broth from the clams into another bowl, rinse the pot to remove the grit. If you use bacon or salt pork, add to the pot with 1 tbs of butter and onions, and simmer until onions are translucent, then replace the broth in soup pot. Add the potatoes, and enough clam juice to cover the potatoes if needed, and crushed pepper (it’s best to take about 2 tsp of whole peppercorns and crush them coarsely rather than milling the pepper) if you grind the pepper, use much less- 3-4 twists). Bring to a boil and simmer until potatoes are soft (approx 10 minutes)

Add the clams and 1 tbs of butter to the pot and allow 3-4 mins to cook in on med-low heat.  Season with additional salt and pepper to taste. This makes low fat, clear clam chowder.

If you want creamy clam chowder, melt 2 tbs of butter in a sauce pan on med heat, add 2 tbs of flour, stir quickly until blended and bubbling as a roux, then slowly pour in 1 cup of cream, stirring until thick and creamy. Stir into the chowder and simmer for 2-3 minutes before serving.

Serves 6-8 generously

One Nation Rally- An Opportunity Lost

People from all over the country came to Washington Saturday, Oct 2, to demonstrate support for jobs, social justice and education. President Obama went to Camp David.  This comes just a week after Vice President Biden scolded liberal Democrats, told them to stop whining and Obama said "buck up".  So the party faithful came to Washington from all over the country and the President gave them brush off.

His lack of support is cause for more than whining. The President obviously thought this was a whining fest, and so, why should he coddle to these people?   I’ll tell you why. They elected him and if he doesn’t start acting like a Democrat, they’ll turn against him in 2012.  The jobless rate is still 10%, Obamacare is a failure, and the war rages on. These are not good one-liners to get re-elected on.

He lost an opportunity to reel in some supporters. He could’ve been the keynote speaker. He could’ve gotten everyone fired up. He could’ve boosted his supporters through media coverage. He could’ve restored some hope. He could’ve given people a reason to believe. He could’ve spoken out for real change, but instead he went to Camp David. 


If President Obama keeps steering the bus of state to the right he'll be off the road in a ditch by 2012 without these whiners.

UFOs, Neanderthals and Republicans

On Monday, September 27, 2010, a former Air Force officer, Capt Robert Salas, who was stationed at a Minuteman silo in Montana in 1967 will give a press conference at the National Press Club.  He’s coming out, so to speak, from his government imposed silence of events that occurred there. He claims that on March 16, 1967, a large, brightly lit, disk shaped UFO, presumably piloted by aliens, hovered over the missile silo and disabled all 10 nuclear warhead missiles. His story is collaborated by other witnesses, so it must be true.  OK! Exhale!

Meanwhile in Italy, a researcher, Riel-Salvatore spent seven years studying Neanderthal sites. He conjectures that Neanderthals may have been the first “techies” in the human race. He found tools they used 42,000 years ago- long before any use of tools by “modern” man. Furthermore, he asserts they were not conquered and driven into extinction as commonly assumed. Rather, they were absorbed into the larger society of Homo sapiens through mating. Evidently their population was very small in comparison to the Homo sapiens, and well, they must have been lonely and vulnerable to a good pick up line.  

And in Washington, we have “back to the future” going on as the Republicans dusted off their 16 year old plan for fixing America and launched a serious, no kidding, re-run of the plan that got us into this mess we have today- all under the audacious presumption of making a “fresh start” to put America back on track. “Let’s toss all that regulation overboard. Who needs it? Health care? We don’t need no stinking health care.” They’re sure the American voters will support them this time.  Honest.

So I suppose if people can believe aliens from outer space can disarm nuclear warheads, and primitive homo sapiens can have a “love-in” with Neanderthals, then people could believe that Republicans can dust off the old failed plan and make it work this time. As this all unfolds though, I’m beginning to wonder if there's a dormant Neanderthal gene lurking about here, and were these legal or illegal aliens?

Congressional Debate Highlights Need for the Green Party

The first debate for the 2^nd Congressional district in New Hampshire between Republican Charlie Bass and Democrat Ann Mclane Kuster was predictable.  Kuster accused Bass of being in Washington for 12 years when all the deregulation was enacted, while Bass said after nearly two years in office, President Obama is responsible for our unemployment today. Both are right. Maybe it’s time to look for a third party- like the Green Party.

Democrats point out that without Obama’s actions unemployment would be worse than it is, and the bank bailout and stimulus bill (better known as re-pave America) averted a second depression that could’ve pushed unemployment to 20% or 25 %.  We’ll never know if that is true. Economists have computer models that may be accurate predictors, but yawn… the average American wouldn’t believe that any more than they believe Obama is a Christian.

One thing is certain though. If Obama didn’t take the action he did, and unemployment did soar to 20%, the Republicans would be on the eve of election victories of landslide- no, of avalanche proportions, and the Tea Party would account for 80% of the electorate.

The Republicans want to bet all their economic recovery hopes on tax relief. I don’t believe that tax relief is the answer. No one wants to point the finger at the true culprit- the banks. For the last two years banks took taxpayer money at bargain rates and invested it for their own profit rather than loaning it to businesses. The investment banks had record profits in 2009, while Joe the Plumber couldn’t get a loan for a new roto-rooter.

As long as the banks horde the money for their own gains, the economy will remain mired down regardless of who is in office, and both parties are letting us down for not addressing this.  People need to wake up to the fact that both major parties are essentially the same, and they argue vehemently around the edges.

I like the Green Party. I like what it stands for. I don’t think I’m alone.

“Pledge to America”, More like a Contract on America

Where’s Bill Murray? Is this Groundhog Day?  Why do I feel like I’m reliving a nightmare from 1994?  Furthermore, since when does leaving the womb of Capital Hill and being videoed at a hardware store in nearby Virginia make you an outsider? This whole charade smacks of a hillbilly Tea Party gathering complete with pitchfork and overalls.  Is America really this gullible and stupid? Let's take a little quiz. Who really benefits from this pledge?

Not the children who are sick and could lose their health coverage

Not the people with catastrophic health care bills that will have lifetime limits restored

Not the 32 million Americans who couldn’t get health insurance before the reform

Not the people who will be dropped by their insurers if they get sick

Not the young people under 26, who will lose their insurance through their parents

Not the people who depend on Social Security

Not the people who depend on Medicare

Not the workers who would like to organize, but can’t because of corporate veto.

Not the gay/lesbians who want to be treated like citizens

Not the workers who lose their jobs overseas
Not poor immigrants trying to eek out a living

Not the troops killed in needless wars

Who then?

The Wall St Banks

Food factories 

Oil, Coal and Nuclear power

Defense contractors

Millionaires

China and every other country that steals American jobs

New? This sounds like old time GOP religion to me.

Glenn Beck - Our Modern Day Father Coughlin

In the depths of the Great Depression FDR initiated wide sweeping programs to stimulate the economy and put people back to work.  His programs were praised by his supporters and railed by his opponents, often describing him as a socialist, Marxist and Communist.  Father Coughlin had a massively popular radio program.  He and his followers were the tea party of the 1930s, staunchly anti-communist, and because “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, Father Coughlin befriended fascism and was sympathetic to Hitler and Mussolini.  He even fomented their anti-Semitic campaign and blamed the Jews for atheist communism.

Today we have a Great Recession.  President Obama has attempted to put people back to work while private industry continues to throw people overboard. Unemployment stands at 9.5 %.  Some experts say that without the stimulus package unemployment would be closer to 11.5% . He has also taken unprecedented action to correct the flaws in our system that allowed disgraceful exploitation and ruined the lives of millions of people.

Our problems all came on the heals of unbridled growth under President Bush when the FDA, FAA, EPA, FCC, SEC, BLM, BMM and countless other agencies that were established to protect Americans and the environment were told to “get big government off the backs of industry” and went on an eight year sabbatical. 

With nobody watching over our interests we got shoddy oil rigs, shady investments, robbed pension funds, mountain top removal, two wars, unsafe airplanes, unprecedented employment of illegal aliens, drugs that cause heart attacks, unsafe cars, cell phone- wireless network interference, E-coli in our beef, and salmonella in a half billion eggs.

Now after all that has happened, Glenn Beck wants to “Restore Honor” by desecrating the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of the MLK “I have a dream speech” by parading his racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, tea party zealots on hallowed ground.  If he were protesting the disgraceful actions of President Bush to restore our honor, it would almost make sense.  But I don’t think that’s what our modern day Father Coughlin has in mind. 

380 Million Eggs Recalled for Salmonella Poisoning

Looks like we had more than a minor oversight in our regulatory oversight here. How does Wright County Eggs of Galt Iowa ship 380 million eggs before being caught violating health laws?  That’s over 31 million cartons of eggs.   The numbers highlight how our food supply sources have been consolidated down to a few centralized food factories- in this case a monopoly on eggs.  How can any small farmer compete with this operation owned by Jack DeCoster who hires illegal immigrants, houses them in rat infested trailers, pays them below minimum wages, harasses and intimates the workers, and repeatedly pays huge fines to the Federal Government while maintaining the status quo of his operations?

They can’t. And as long as consumers buy the lowest priced eggs, these factories will flourish and small farmers will continue to die off. Our locally produced cage free Nellie's Eggs are humanely raised from happy chickens. They are a dollar  more than factory eggs, but I’ll gladly pay the extra buck to keep a fellow NH farmer in business. And I get much better and healthier eggs for my money.

You would think that one benefit of a centralized factory farm ( and I use the term "benefit" loosely) would be a robust FDA presence. After all, rather than hop-scotching around the country checking up on hundreds or thousands of small farmers, strong oversight at one mega-egg factory would be easier and quite justified by the potential risk to our entire population. Something this big should even bring in Homeland Security. What a great epicenter to launch a bio-attack on the homeland.

As far back as 1997 Mr. DeCoster has been cited for numerous violations. Robert Reich, Labor Secretary under Clinton, called Mr. DeCoster’s operation an “agricultural sweatshop”. I can’t wait to hear all the fall out on this fiasco. Obama will be blamed for running a shabby FDA, turning a blind eye to flagrant and repeated employment of illegal aliens, allowing an unsafe product, and unhealthy work environment. While this deplorable company managed to operate under both the Clinton and Bush Administrations, maybe President Obama should take some heat on this one.  This is happening on his watch too.

Beyond the Point of No Return

I remember refillable bottles. Most people under the age of 40 wouldn’t know what I’m talking about.  I worked in a dairy as a teenager. The empty bottles were picked up at each home and came back with the milkman in the afternoon. They were washed that evening and refilled the next day. Simple.

No one can convince me that reusing a bottle uses more energy than recycling a bottle, yet recycling has evolved to be our moral imperative and reusable bottles are just about extinct. We can credit the departure from “refillable” to “no deposit-no return” as the beginning of the end. That step began to fill our dumps. Further transition to use plastic containers for literally everything we purchased made the problem untenable.  In fact, our wasteful, throwaway society filled dumps and littered roadsides because no value was placed on the bottle or the plastic.  A few states tried to stem the throwaway mindset by paying for returns, but so few states pursued the policy it just died from neglect. Thankfully, we at least pursue a voluntary recycling ethic today.

When the dumps filled up with glass and plastic, communities pursued recycling, not with the objective to save energy, but rather to avert a costly, over capacity dump. We’ve gone almost full circle now. Today the really “in thing” is to support local businesses and nurture a sustainable local economy. So people are starting to look for milk in glass bottles again, and use other symbols of conservation like reusable grocery bags. Unfortunately, we may be beyond the point of no return.

I can recount the history of landfills in Bedford, NH as a typical example of what occurred in the aftermath of  “no deposit-no return” bottles, plastic and the Clean Air Act. Bedford was founded in the early 1700s. For more than 200 years a dump was maintained on a small 2 acre site almost in the center of town.  The refuse was burned. It was burned because the items that were deposited at the dump would burn.  Largely an agricultural community, organic material was composted at home or fed to the animals, and all glass bottles were returned to their source and reused. People “canned” their meats and vegetables in reusable glass jars. Plastic didn’t exist. The dump was not a very busy place.

The clean air act banned municipal burning at the dump. So a landfill was required.  We converted from polluting the air to polluting the ground.  Along with landfills came tons of “no deposit- no return” glass and  plastic bottles and containers. Within a few years the dump was full. In less than 30 years the  land was essentially turned into a “superfund” waste site and closed.  Little Bedford is but a microcosm of what happened throughout the country. Today we have a “transfer station”. I liken this to putting something in the toilet and flushing it down. After it disappears it’s no longer my problem.  These transfer stations have become collection points for massive centralized Walmart style landfills at far away locations. Think of the energy that's wasted in just moving the trash around the country. Someday they’ll be super-superfund sites.

Opponents of reusing bottles say that the process uses more energy and is more costly. I agree with the cost argument, but only because we built a worldwide business model around a throwaway product and we shouldn’t expect that model to work for both.  For example, at one time there were over 2700 Coca-Cola bottling plants in America.  Each bottler was franchised and served a local community.  We had a locally based, sustainable community business model. Shipping both ways was efficient because the trucks that delivered full bottles picked up the empties and returned them for reuse. The supply chain management was simple and locally based.   Milk delivery was even more localized, sometimes confined to neighborhoods.

Contrast that with a bottle of Sam’s Cola that might originate from Arkansas and be transported in trailer trucks to a regional distribution center. From there the cola is packaged with other goods, put on another trailer truck, and delivered to a local Walmart or Sam’s Club. The empty trailer truck returns to some other place to pick up another load.  The interstates are full of truckers pulling empty trailers. If the empty bottle is lucky enough to find its way to a recycling center- again more trucking involved- then the plastic is converted to some other product- like Polar Fleece for blankets or the like- more energy is consumed, and we’re supposed to feel good about that. Remember wool? It only needs  grass.

The attached article got me going on this issue as it highlights what could be the final demise of refillable beer bottles in America, and possibly the last sad and unfortunate victim of our "no deposit-no return" economy.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/18/national/main6783391.shtml?tag=stack

ST. MARYS, Pa., Aug. 18, 2010

Reusable Beer Bottles Facing Extinction

Only 2 Pennsylvania Breweries Still Take Empties Back to Reuse; 1 Is About to Quit, It's All Down to Straub

For years, it was the way breweries did business: sell bottles, then take back the empties. It just made sense, especially to folks weaned in the lean days of the Great Depression and World War II, that bottles should be scrubbed and refilled, not thrown away. 

These days, in a culture where nearly everything is disposable, recycling is a rite and energy costs are high, the decision of whether to toss tradition into the trash heap lies with one brewery about 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. 

The 138-year-old, family-owned Straub Brewery is begging customers - mostly in Pennsylvania, but also some in Ohio, New York and Virginia - to return thousands of empty cases. If enough customers do, Straub will keep selling cases of 12- and 16-ounce returnable bottles past year's end. 

"It's not that we're totally into 'green,' but we think it's the right thing to do," said Dan Straub, great-grandson of company founder Peter Straub and the brewery's semiretired vice president. "Our philosophy is, 'Why recycle when you can reuse?"' 

One other brewer - the nation's oldest, D.G. Yuengling & Son of Pottsville, Pa. - still sells and gathers returnables. But it expects to phase them out by summer's end, leaving Straub as what experts believe is the last holdout in the U.S. 

Returnable bottles need to be cleaned, requiring extra energy. They are heavier so they won't break and must be shipped both ways, meaning fuel use and costs are significant for all but the smallest regional breweries. The larger breweries - Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors - gave up on returnables years ago because their costs multiplied with national distribution. 

Straub customers pay a $1.50 deposit per 24-bottle case and can get it back or just buy another case when they return the bottles to the store, distributor or brewery. 

The brewery spent more than $900,000 about five years ago to buy 150,000 cases of returnable bottles, and most of them are gone - some broken, some thrown away, but, brewery officials suspect, most retained by customers unaccustomed to returning them or filled with home brews. 

The brewery has so few bottles left, it's affecting production. 

Straub can produce 1,500 24-bottle cases of 16-ounce returnables and 2,100 cases of 12-ounce returnables in a day. But one recent batch of 16-ounce returnables was just 753 cases - because there were no more empties. 

"When the system of returnables works, everybody wins," said Bill Brock, Straub's chief executive and great-great-grandson of the founder. "We're just not getting that glass back." 

Soda companies are doing the same thing. LeRoy Telstad said his Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Winona, Minn., is one of only two bottlers in the U.S. that still produces Coke in returnables. The other is in New Mexico. 

"We're where Coke came from," Telstad said of his company, which serves four counties. "There used to be 2,700 bottlers of Coke in the United States, so it really was not just regional - it was local." 

The returnable-bottle model still works for Telstad because he serves an area less than 70 miles across and because returnable bottles of Coke and a few other flavors with the regional "Sunrise" label are a small fraction of his business. Ninety percent is soft drinks or juices sold in nonreturnable bottles and cans. 

"It's become so much of a niche now," Telstad said. "Customers like the nostalgia of it." 

Straub doesn't consider returnables a niche product but also doesn't need them to survive. Canned beer, added just last year, has been "flying out the door" and sales have never been better, Brock said. 

"If we were a public company, it would be like, 'Dump that line,"' Brock said. "But it's our customers. Their fathers drank it, their grandfathers drank it. It's not just a business decision." 

About 12 percent of all U.S. beer was sold in returnable bottles in 1981. Since 2007, the percentage has been negligible, according to statistics kept by the Washington, D.C.-based Beer Institute. 

In Pennsylvania, more than a quarter of all beer sold in 1981 was in returnables. The state's antiquated liquor control laws required most beer to be sold by the case through distributors, so returning empty cases wasn't particularly inconvenient. 

That has changed as convenience stores and supermarkets have increasingly gotten the OK to sell six- or 12-packs - which come in nonreturnable bottles and cans. 

About 20 percent of Straub is sold in kegs, and the brewery will produce about 45,000 cases of bottles and cans this year - with 20 percent of that in returnable bottles, Brock said. 

By contrast, Dick Yuengling said the 30,000 cases of 12-ounce returnables his brewery, founded in 1829, will churn out this year is too small of a percentage for him to figure out. 

"The consumer's been indoctrinated; we're a throwaway society," he said. "Everybody's environmentally conscious, but if you put a case of returnable bottles in front of them, they say, 'What's that?"'

The Twenty-eighth Amendment to Repeal Citizenship?

No (non-religious) document is more revered than our US Constitution. At 221 years old, we’ve seen fit to amend it only 27 times. One of those amendments, the Eighteenth, was a frivolous imposition of religious morality into the lives of Americans. The Twenty-first Amendment undid that act of imposed morality, so we’re only left with twenty-five that mean anything today.

Now with so much animosity toward undocumented aliens, conservatives would like to amend the Constitution to not recognize the citizenship of people born in the United States if their parents are not citizens or legal aliens. This seems ludicrous, yet elected Congressmen and Senators are talking about this seriously, but I think they’re just riding the latest anti-Obama wave, and looking for campaign fodder.

I assume (and hope) this amendment has no chance of being adopted by Congress or ratified by the States, yet the right wing talking heads will likely ruminate on this till the cows come home.  What they’re doing is creating new campaign fodder to highlight the difference between Democrats and Republicans- as if we needed another gene to be identified in addition to homophobia, racialphobia, Moslemphobia, Obamaphobia, taxphobia, carbonphobia, climatephobia, terrorphobia, warphobia, Obamacarephobia, and debtphobia- now we have immigrationphobia.

The Numbers Speak Volumes

70% of the people polled object to the proposed mosque being built so close to ground zero. Frankly, I’m encouraged that 30% do.  After all, what’s the percentage of Islamic people in the US?  3%? 5%?  That means a lot of non-Moslems-- maybe 25%-27% of the people -- upwards of 70 million people-- have an understanding of our constitution and an understanding of the difference between religion and terrorism.

I’ve been amazed at how many people blame Islam for 9/11.  Would they blame all Catholics for the Oklahoma City bombing because of Timothy McVeigh?  When are these opponents of freedom of religion going to get it straight? Religions are not terrorists. People are terrorists.  I can’t think of a more fitting way for Moslems to pay respect for the tragedy of 9/11 than to erect a sacred place of worship representing one of the three great Abrahamic religions of our civilization.

To the 70 million of so non-Moslems who have no objection, I’m proud of you. To the 210 million or so non-Moslems who oppose the mosque- I suggest you exercise your freedom of religion, go to your church or synagogue, pray to the same God Moslems worship, and try to seek an understanding of both issues.