james, -- james zogby.en working for over 30 in the trenches trying to empower americans of all backgrounds and faiths, particularly the arab-american community. his unique in that he is arab- american, but also irish and catholic. he has seen this movie before. he has an historical context. we will start with salam and proceed down. >> thank you and good morning. abouting to be talking the muslim-american community and islam, but tie it into the park 51 controversy, because there are a lot of questions that arise from the issue. first and foremost, the nomenclature of this particular controversy started out as the ground zero mosque controversy. by now, everyone in knowledge is that the place is not at ground zero and it is not a mosque. it is a few blocks away, and it is a community center that was actually intended to develop interfaith understanding. that is important because of a lot of muslim-american institutions now are doing exactly that, reaching out to their fellow neighbors, to christians and je

obvio obviously, the president, if you look at the zogby numbers.michelle obama. it's a smart strategy. when you're down to, if it's the bottom of the ninth, you have to put all your best players out there. so, i'm glad we have her and i'm glad she's going to be out there. >> karen, you have to pull some of them off the field, too. >> yeah. >> so, back to christine o'donnell, i guess. >> right. >> well, isn't this interesting. >> no doubt, christine's in big trouble up there in delaware, but look closely. >> the poll numbers for her aren't good right now. >> can i just say as a cleveland indians fan every baseball analogy hurts. pat buchanan and karen finny, thanks to both of you. great conversation. >>> more backlash today from the republican party against the alaska senator, lisa murkowski. she is refusing to go quietly after she lost her primary, saying the people of her state still want her. >> but what happened after that primary was absolutely unauthorizing from the people of the state of alaska saying, lisa, you cannot, you cannot end this. p

zogby talked about. i have been talking to some friends in the media and post 9/11 we suffered this horrendous attack and -- but, the country seemed to pull together. why is this coming up now, eight, nine years later? why is there now a call to stop the construction of mosques around the country? there are 2000 + mosques and around the country. the population has grown to nearly a million muslims in the country. why is this coming up now? >> there is a general mood afoot in the country. it is part and parcel of the broader social unraveling, i think, that is taking place. we saw it began last summer. i think some of it has to do with the fact that we have elected and african american president. some folks just cannot in just it. there is no question that the economic distress and social dislocation is part of it. and i think at the same time, eight or nine years of disinformation has taken a toll. but the social conditions were not there, if this unraveling was not there, i do not think we would see it

. >> jim zogby. >> i am pleased that the attorney general will be meeting with us to talk about it later in the day. but i think as our statement notes, some political figures have attempted to make this a wedge issue in this election. and while individuals ines contest, senator durbin for one, and mayor bloomberg, the mayor of new york city, have made extraordinary statement, many other political leaders and many other people running for office in this year's election have been disgraceful, and they have fueled the fire. and i think they have done great damage to the electorate in how this issue is being framed. it is not just a religious issue. it is not just a media issue. it has become a political issue. it should not have become that kind of issue and i think we need to speak out against that. >> just to add a another thing, this morning, to talk about the administration, we had a representative of the administration with us up the neighborhood planning and also, the white house initiative on faith based initiatives. all of this information will be fed to the white house so that the

zogby talked about. post 9/11 we suffered this horrendous tragic attack, but the country seemed to pull together. and while there were incidents of retaliation and some incidents not only against muslim-americans, but people perceived to be muslim-american, why is this coming up now, eight or nine years later? where is there now a call to stop construction of mosques across the country. there are 2,000 plus mosques in the country. there are six to eight million muslims in the country. why is this happening now? >> there is a -- >> you need to turn it on. >> there is a general mood afoot in the country. it is part and parcel of the broader social unraveling, i think, that is taking place. we saw it begin last summer. i think some of it has to do with the fact that we have elected an african-american president. some folks just can't ingest it. there's no question that the economic distress and the social dislocation is part of it. and i think at the same time that eight or nine years of disinformation has