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Saturday, March 12, 2011

Libya: Showing the world what it's like without American leadership.



Have you noticed that the Obama administration is actually implementing a foreign policy that puts the United Nations in the lead?   You can't say that Obama isn't following up on his campaign rhetoric.  Making the UN the arbiter of international action is, after all, what the Liberal community has been demanding for ever so long. 

Libya is the first test of how a post-America world can handle the threats to world peace. How's that working out so far? Are you really ready to say that DNI Clapper is dim-witted for telling a Senate committee that Khaddafi will probably win this civil war?
Clapper's testimony before congress may have been one of those famous "Kinsley Gaffes"
a politician inadvertently saying something publicly that they privately believe is true, but would ordinarily not say publicly because they believe it is politically harmful
If this wasn't the change you were looking for, you're out of luck.

This policy was very clearly enunciated in "THE GREATEST SPEECH EVAH™"  delivered in Cairo when he said:
“The fourth issue that I will address is democracy.  I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.”
So if you want democracy in Libya and K. Daffy's hired goons are bombing you and sending out tanks to massacre you, the most you'll get is hot air.  That was the last president; this one thinks that promoting democracy is too controversial. 

The Jerseynut recounts that Obama's pronouncement was received with great praise for its renunciation of "simplistic divisions between good and evil":
 
...from George Packer's New Yorker piece:

Obama, in his Cairo speech and throughout his first year in office, has rightly felt the need to cleanse the air of the arrogance and the folly of his predecessor. There is no more American moralizing or hectoring about freedom, no simplistic division of the world into good and evil. Instead of “with us or against us,” the key phrase in Obama’s foreign policy has been “mutual interest and mutual respect.”
I'm quite sure that K.Daffy appreciates that nuance right now; not sure what the rebels fighting this madman fully appreciate it. It sucks to be them.

Islam and the West: What Do We Do Now?


Pajamas Media has a logically consistent essay by N.M Guariglia Addressing Islam: The Muslim Brotherhood and Democracy with the subhead:
The entire apparatus of U.S.-Muslim dialogue is controlled by our enemies.
The links between the leading lights of the "legitimate" Muslim community in the US and the Muslim Brotherhood is unmistakable and multi-faceted.   When we have discussions with CAIR, we have discussions with the Muslim Brotherhood.  Advisers to Presidents Clinton and Bush are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.  How much closer are we to the Muslim Brotherhood under Obama?

Thousands of Americans are alive not because Islam is the religion of peace but because its adherents on Jihad are not terribly competent. Others died because we were too afraid of being accused of intolerance to stop killers like Major Nidal  before this Muslim ran amuck.
In the United States, there were terrorist attempts on Penn Station, at a military recruitment center in Arkansas, on a federal building in Illinois, against other landmarks in Manhattan, and on a Dallas skyscraper. Then there was the Christmas Day plot against Northwest Airlines Flight 253, which would have killed more than 300 people had the al-Qaeda operative been more competent; the Times Square plot, which would have been worse than the Oklahoma City bombing had the operative been more competent; and the Fort Hood massacre, which could have been avoided had we been less afraid to appear intolerant of intolerance. And all this happened in just the past year and a half. They’re here.
What is Islam and is there a "good" Islam and are the violent killers like Christians gone bad?
The truth is this: Islam is not merely a religion. Islam is a complete way of life: theological, political, social, and legal. Islamic law is the literal word of the Koran, which is supposed to be the direct word of God. It claims to be unalterable. There are no metaphors. It claims to be timeless. What was true in the seventh century is true today and cannot be reinterpreted to conform to contemporary mores. ...

The Koran is said to be progressive revelation. Should one verse instruct friendliness to non-Muslims and another instruct the murder of non-Muslims, the doctrine of abrogation is to be applied. In other words, since there can be no contradictions within the Koran — that is the book’s foundation — the most recent revelation is the one that is applicable. Unfortunately, the most recent Koranic revelations are the unfriendly ones; the homicidal ones. “Jihad” is not a yoga-like exercise for internal spiritual discovery. It is the killing of non-Muslims and the enforcement of Islamic rule throughout the world. “Peace” is not coexistence. It is Islamic dominion over the planet. “Freedom” is not individual liberty. It is submission to the supernatural.
The state of denial in which we live - even after 9/11 - must be seen as a pathological one. Guariglia says:
We ought to shut down the internal jihadist infrastructure controlling the American-Muslim community. We ought to challenge the ten-year plan of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference to stifle freedom of speech, thought, and expression in the West. We ought to more passionately defend the superiority of democratic and liberal values — in ethics, in philosophy, and in practice. We ought to call for explanations on behalf of the Islamic world. What is it they actually believe? What actions are they willing to take on behalf of these beliefs? Rather than tell them what they want to hear, we ought to begin insisting they tell us what we want to hear.

And finally, we ought to devise a foreign policy whereby we officially oppose the inclusion of fascist theocratic movements in new democratic governments — whether Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Taliban in Afghanistan, or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt — and proclaim our support for true freedom. As with Hitler’s Germany, democracies can easily be destroyed in their infancy through the tactic of “one man, one vote, one time.”


The hearings Representative King is holding is a good start and may form the basis for a frank and healthy discussion of Islam in the US.  But the "culture" in the Liberal/Left side of America is fighting on jihad's side.  The recent revelations from NPR (along with the NY Times the quintessential essence of Liberalism) put that on glorious display. 

In the meantime, Islam is on a roll.   There is something that we can learn from history that's instructive.  To go back to the regime of Adolph Hitler, we know that as long as the German armies were rolling over their enemies and successfully conquering most of Europe, most Germans, even the ones who were not members of the Nazi Party were enthusiastic supporters.  His regime even had a lot of support in nations he conquered, raising armies that fought on his side.  Once he lost, the numbers of "heroic resistance fighters" swelled to the millions ... to hear them tell it.   Like a tide, the trend of victory and defeat builds its own movement.  So far, while we have faced an enemy on the battlefield, we have failed to properly identify it.  And we have totally failed to identify it in its adherents among us.  You can't defeat something you don't admit exists. 

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Battle of Wisconsin

GOP: Full speed ahead on defunding NPR

YES!

(Isn't it amazing how technology is changing the world?)

Re-evaluating Chris Christie; Second Thoughts.



I admire Chris Christie for the aggressive posture he took in New Jersey to try to fix the fiscal mess he inherited.  But I have to admit that there are things that he has said that come across like a false note in a piece of music.  One of them is taking shots at Sarah Palin ... as if he views her as a competitor. 

I don't get this guy Christie. We all know, because his YouTube channel has repeatedly told us so, that he plays the tough guy on the stump - when it comes to his issues. But opponents of the ground Zero mosque - oh, they're unhinged anti-Muslims. If you support Arizona's recently passed immigration law, well, that's too much. You must be anti-Hispanic, or something. Using the term Blood Libel? Well, that's obviously going too far.

Oh, but Chris Christie, well, he's the only real tough guy in the room, or on the stump, right? Sorry, something does not add up when I view this in broad context. It's as if he thinks he's the only one allowed to call out people with whom he disagrees. If someone else does it, well, obviously they've gone too far, or don't have the judgment it takes to lead. Either he lacks self-awareness, or for some reason, he thinks he's entitled to operate under a different standard, while also being quick to judge others for actions far less in your face than some of his. What ever it is, I don't like all of what I see when I take a closer look. Whatever the reason, it sends up a red flag, even if I'm not precisely sure why, or what it means.

Christie has done a great PR job and he is a political rock star.  But there is a false note in the way he talks and the stances he takes.  I'm starting to have my doubts. 

Remember when ObamaCare passed, and Tea Partiers went nuts, stormed the hill, took over the building and handcuffed themselves inside?

Yeah, me neither, because the Tea Partiers are civilized and didn’t do any of that. Wisconsin’s leftist union thugs, not so much.

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Matthews: What’s up with Newt Gingrich using these Christian hand gestures?

Is pointing a Christian hand gesture?

Is Obama a war criminal yet?

Good question.

President Obama quietly signed an executive order on Monday instituting a system for indefinitely holding terrorist detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo), Cuba. The administration also announced that terrorist trials by military commission would recommence...

The big losers in this decision are members of Mr. Obama’s hardline anti-war base. It is the latest in a string of disappointments to the Code Pinkers, Moveon-ers and other formerly Obama-loving peaceniks. The surge in Afghanistan and the ever-lengthening timetable for withdrawal provided them with one regret. The widening and intensifying use of drone aircraft as a counterterrorism tool was another. Now the Gitmo detainees are back in their cages for good. The distraught workers in the peace movement have to be asking themselves how much more they can stand before they begin to mutter the words “Obama” and “war criminal” in the same breath.

Won't happen. Obama is a Democrat and that trump everything.

Steyn: " Islam is different and must be accorded a special deference."

What does it say about Western Liberals when THIS gets no reaction:
A prominent British imam has been forced to retract his claims that Islam is compatible with Darwin’s theory of evolution after receiving death threats from fundamentalists.

This is not in Lahore or Cairo but in London, at what is described as “a prominent mosque which also runs one of the country’s largest sharia courts” – in other words, a religious institution that already enjoys the imprimatur of state approval, albeit not (yet) to the same degree as in Pakistan. The imam, Dr Hasan, has issued a groveling apology – “I seek Allah’s forgiveness for my mistakes” – but they still want to kill him. Note the following line in the story:

Police advised him not to attend after becoming concerned for his safety.





I can go to the respected legal website Volokh Conspiracy and find a number of comments by regular there who make it a habit to bash Christians as Neanderthals, believers in a sky fairy and the vanguard of the coming American Theocracy. A great many in the legal community make NPR's Ron Schiller look positively even handed. If the article involves either atheists of homosexuals these comments are assured. But the Christian-bashers are painfully polite when it comes to Muslims. In fact, they will often turn on Christians and accuse them of bigotry and name-your-phobia when the fear of Islamofascism is mentioned.

Dr Hasan is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. I wonder if those many western intellectuals eager to heap Himalayas of derision on those (largely apocryphal) American school districts that require creationism to be taught alongside evolution will be equally gung-ho about hooting and jeering at men who are willing to kill for the mildest suggestion that Islam and evolution are not entirely incompatible.

When the west’s bestselling atheists, stand-up comics, transgressive artists and all the rest belittle Christianity but steer clear of Islam, they’re not just engaging in prudent self-protection. They’re objectively advancing the cause of Islamic imperialism – because their selective mockery acts in support of the bullies’ core belief, that Islam is different and must be accorded a special deference...


Cowardice combined with multiculturalism.

Jennifer Aniston 'sex tape'

Sorry, I could not resist.



For the story, go here.

Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Most Americans can't imagine that they are ruled by overweight, pasty, transgendered union thugs with bad hairstyles. But they are.

Vanderleun has this wonderful clip.

Today I Am A Muslim, Too (From Small Dead Animals)



Come celebrate by joining in the 24 Hour Clitoridectomy.

A mob of nearly four thousand Muslims has attacked Coptic homes this evening in the village of Soul, Atfif in Helwan Governorate, 30 kilometers from Cairo, and torched the Church of St. Mina and St. George…

This incident was triggered by a relationship between 40-year-old Copt Ashraf Iskander and a Muslim woman. Yesterday a “reconciliation” meeting was arranged between the relevant Coptic and Muslim families and together with the Muslim elders it was decided that Ashraf Iskander would have to leave the village because Muslims torched his house.

The father of the Muslim woman was killed by his cousin because he did not kill his daughter to preserve the family’s honor, which led the woman’s brother to avenge the death of his father by killing the cousin. The village Muslims blamed the Christians.

The Muslim mob attacked the church, exploding 5-6 gas cylinders inside the church, pulled down the cross and the domes and burnt everything inside…Witnesses said the mob chanted “Allahu Akbar” and vowed to conduct their morning prayers on the church plot after razing it.


You too can become a Muslim for a day and show your solidarity with Russell Simmons and Kim Kardashian.... and Ashraf Iskander

What do STOP, General Motors and the Wisconsin Public School System have in common?


STOP is the Southeastern Tidewater Opportunity Project which closed 31 Head Start preschool centers throughout South Hampton Roads recently. STOP received $11.6 million in federal funds last year to operate Head Start through the end of March. According to the Virginian Pilot, STOP had revenue totaling $19.6 million, mainly from federal grants.

It is now under investigation for paying more than $100,000 in bonuses to key employees.

It has been said that General Motors was a retirement plan for auto workers that also made cars. It sounds as if STOP was a cash cow for its employees with a small subsidiary that taught 1600 young kids. And that the Wisconsin school system is a benefits program for its employees that also runs schools, poorly.

Sunday, March 06, 2011

Letter to my Libertarian Friends.

From the summer of love to the fall of the Berlin wall, the Left’s basic concepts were built around the belief that Western civilization – more specifically America - was wrong, that free enterprise was evil, that individualism was selfish, that our Judeo-Christian heritage was really a stalking horse for theocratic despotism. We were all just meat puppets with all the meaning and grace of mayflies.

The fall of the USSR revealed that to be false. So now the Left is falling back to a kind of intellectual terrorism, to insult and ridicule, to putting borders around what can be said. Liberals can get away with that because they “own” the popular culture. It’s why they direct so much of their venom to voices that disagree or don’t reflect their views: Limbaugh, Beck, FOX News. These figures threaten the homogeneity of the Liberal culture, exposing its false facade. It’s why – for Liberals – the priests who molested altar boys were a gift - forgive the term - from God (and why they will vehemently deny that these priests were practicing homosexuals). For Liberals, the Catholic Church can now be smeared as a collection of sexual perverts thereby destroying its edifice.

The argument we are having in this country between the Left and the rest is not fundamentally an argument about taxes or government programs. It’s an argument about culture, an argument about religion and about good versus evil. That is one of the primary reasons why the Libertarian demand that Conservatives park their social issues at the door in choosing candidates is unrealistic. It’s essentially a demand that the majority of Americans give up their essential beliefs so that a small minority that has never managed to get more than a few percentages of voters to the polls can set the agenda.

Libertarians, the ones who write and publish and go on the internet to denounce people of faith as proto-Fascists and believers in fables, are going to have to decide whose policies are most closely aligned with their own. If you want to see laws enacted sanctioning homosexual marriage and the abolition of all drug laws, vote for the Liberal. The odds are in favor of you getting your agenda enacted into law faster. Just keep in mind that the Liberal has other items on his agenda that will make the government more intrusive than it already is. And those things either make you do something, stop you from doing something, or cost you money, limiting the choices you have and the resources you have left to do your own thing.

If the top item on your agenda is to be left alone by the government, vote for the Conservative. You may not like the fact that they consider some of your actions sinful and tell their kids not to do things that you think are perfectly great, but they turn a blind eye to what you do in private as long as you don’t scare the horses. They may not want the government to issue marriage licenses to Joy and Jane or Steve and Bill, but they won’t stop them from living together. It may outrage Joy, Jane, Steve and Bill to be denied this piece of paper, but they and their forebears lived by the same rules for millennia, so live with it. Lots of Jacks and Jills are living together without that piece of paper; maybe they’re on to something.

Conservatives in power may defund some government programs that you think are perfectly great, but that means that you can get together with your fellow Libertarians and fund them as private citizens.

One other thing that Conservatives will do is turn a jaundiced eye toward “Crony Capitalism.” Remember that Conservatives favor free enterprise. When government gets into bed with business, that’s not free enterprise. What Obama did to GM when he made government and the auto unions partners in the theft from bondholders is not free enterprise. What GE’s Jeff Immelt and Obama are hatching in their collusion is not free enterprise. Government hand-outs to government-preferred “green energy” producers is not free enterprise. Government is notoriously poor at predicting the future including the future of technology. Meanwhile the opportunities for corruption are limited only by the creativity of the ruling class and the number of dollars that are available.

Libertarians are a small voting minority with a loud voice. There are several aspects of Libertarianism that I support because I believe that the government is too intrusive and I believe that Libertarians agree. But I don’t believe that we are meat puppets. I believe that there is a higher power; that there is a God and that he is responsible for the creation of the universe. I also believe that he instilled in us the knowledge of right and wrong. Those things that are wrong fall under the term that has fallen into disuse: sin. Some in the Libertarian community are of the belief that the belief in sin is itself evil. If we are meat puppets, that would be true. Most Americans disagree. And it’s why Libertarians, as currently understood will always be a minority.  It's why I am a Christian Conservative.

The World According to Andrew Klavan

Andrew Klavan: Multiculturalism Explained.

Qaddafi (like Hosni Mubarak) only recently became a villain. (The Bat Signal.)

Commenting on the decision of a few pop music stars to give back the money they received from K. Daffy for personal appearances, Ed Driscoll references “the Great Celebrity Implosion of the 21st-century.”

I prefer the explanation in one of the comments that follows. T.S. remarks that most of the pop stars are like Nelly Furtado.
Nelly Furtado is a garden-variety Gen Y arts community fashionable liberal from Vancouver. It’s probably a mistake to make too much of her politics. A deep thinker she likely ain’t. She went from being a high school candy raver, to a hip hop chick, to a neo- folkie-singer/songwriter-hippie chick, to a glamorous pop star (and symbol of young single female sexual “empowerment”). Her biggest hit song was about being “Promiscuous,” bit in its verses, she still managed to give shout outs to Amnesty International and Steve Nash.

Ms. Furtado’s politics have always appeared to be those of the kind of trendy liberal who thinks that taking the positions of the fashionably reflexive Left equates to being socially conscious and doing the right thing. In giving the $ million back to Mr. al-Qaddafi, she’s most likely doing what she thinks (or her PR people think) is the right thing to do.



So why is she – and some of the others like her – giving the money back (or to charity)? Have they realized that K. Daffy was a bad man?   Well, not at the time.
“In terms of pop culture relevancy, Anti-American Muslim dictators from North Africa were thought to be pretty freakin’ cool when Bush was president. After all, those guys were standing up to the oppressor and raising a fist in the air and speaking truth to power and showing solidarity and trying to change the world and all of that. So until the recent Libyan uprising, it made all the sense in the world for American entertainers to perform for Qaddafi … Plus, for the old-timers, Qaddafi’s animus toward and defiance of Ronald Reagan earned him big props, though that hasn’t been much of a factor for a while — 1986 was way before most young fashionable liberals’ time (Ms. Furtado included).”
What changed? Obama ...The Lightworker  

But now that President Obama has decided that it’s time to officially condemn Qaddafi, the message has been sent like the Bat Signal to everyday fashionable Gen X, Gen Y and Millennial liberals — hipsters, SWPL, single city girls, college students, Bikhram yoga instructors, NYT readers, AOLHuffington Post readers, DJ’s, bartenders, news reporters, advertising executives, entertainment professionals, etc. — that Quaddafi is a BAD GUY. If President Obama says you’re bad, then you’re bad. And now that the President has decided it’s time to call Qaddafi bad, everybody knows that Qaddafi is indeed bad. You know, like Mubarak and the Governor of Wisconsin.
So it’s a little harsh to rake Nelly Furtado over the coals for being a hypocrite. She’s probably very sincerely trying to do the right thing. She just lives in a world in which Left Wing and low-information liberal narratives are the rule. And in that world, al-Qaddafi (like Hosni Mubarak) only recently became a villain.
I wish I had said that.

Saturday, March 05, 2011

Religious persecution around the world.

Just a little update ...

In the U S of A, we have Muslims beating up Jews.
A first of its kind federal civil rights case has been filed in United States District Court in Oakland, California, against the University of California at Berkeley, by a Jewish student who had been assaulted on campus last year by a leader of a Muslim student organization during a pro-Israel event.
In Egypt, Christian churches are being burned - with the Christians possibly inside.
Nearly 4000 Muslims Attack Christian Homes in Egypt, Torch Church (AINA) -- A mob of nearly four thousand Muslims has attacked Coptic homes this evening in the village of Soul, Atfif in Helwan Governorate, 30 kilometers from Cairo, and torched the Church of St. Mina and St. George. There are conflicting reports about the whereabouts of the Church pastor Father Yosha and three deacons who were at church; some say they died in the fire and some say they are being held captive by the Muslims inside the church.

In Ethiopia it's the same story:
Washington, D.C. (March 3, 2011)–International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that in the past two days, thousands of Muslims have razed five churches and the homes of two evangelists in Asendabo, Ethiopia. Christian leaders are asking for protection after the Muslim attackers continued burning churches even after the federal police were sent to the town.

The Muslims started the attacks yesterday after falsely accusing the Christians of desecrating the Qur’an. More than ten thousand Muslims shouted “Allah Akbar” (Allah is great) as they burned down five evangelical churches. The government sent the federal police force to protect the Christians after the Muslims burned down the first three churches. The Muslims overwhelmed the police force and burned down two more churches today.
Of course the Liberal community ignores these acts while the Gay community loudly proclaims its victimhood at the hands of those dastardly Christianists.

Meanwhile in Pakistan Christian officials and those who try to protect them are being killed right and left.

Isn't it comforting the know that Fred Phelps is a Democrat?

Yes, Fred Phelps, leader of the obnoxious Westboro Baptist Church is a Democrat.

Fred Phelps - A Democrat from Papa Giorgio on Vimeo.

Harvard Professors say: ROTC Bad. Gaddafi money Good!


Monitor Group, a Cambridge-based consultant firm founded by Harvard professors. The management consulting firm received $250,000 a month from the Libyan government from 2006 to 2008 for a wide range of services, including writing the book proposal, bringing prominent academics to Libya to meet Khadafy “to enhance international appreciation of Libya’’ and trying to generate positive news coverage of the country.
Those fastidious folks who could not bear to have their campus sullied by American servicemen apparently had their price. It’s amazing what and who you can buy if you show them the money. Remember Carville’s slur about Paula Jones and dragging a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park? It turns out that dragging hundred dollar bills through Harvard Yard will get you full professors willing to cover up dictatorship and murder. Oh, and they'll help you with your homework.

Yesterday, Monitor Group acknowledged in a statement that its paid work included helping Khadafy’s son Saif with his doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics.
Of course the profs did not reveal their political prostitution willingly.
Many of the firm’s internal memos had been revealed on a Libyan opposition group website in 2009.

A few of the academics are identified by name and they are the who's who of global education.
The fallout over relations between high-profile academics and Libya has already taken a toll. Sir Howard Davies resigned yesterday as a director at the London School of Economics, which said it would start an inquiry into the school’s ties with the Khadafy family.

Professors sent to visit Khadafy included luminaries such as Joseph Nye, former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; Lord Anthony Giddens, former head of the London School of Economics; Francis Fukuyama political philosopher from Stanford University; and Benjamin Barber, who has written extensively about democracy.



The Monitor Group is not a small organization, boasting 1,500 employees and 29 office worldwide.  It is particularly proud of its Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Network, Racial Diversity Network and Women's Leadership Initiative.   For some reason it did not choose to devote part of its website to its “Whitewashing Brutal Dictators Project.”


Yesterday it was reported that Harvard had admitted ROTC to its campus again. I would suggest that the military reconsider its decision. The American military is held in much higher regard that the academic community. Now that this particular cesspool has been uncovered, we question how long it will be before the stench rubs off.

Instalanche: Thanks, Glenn.  As an aside: Isn't it comforting the know that Fred Phelps is a Democrat?