Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Homeland Security Nominee No Border Hawk
Far from being a border hawk, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano frequently blocked efforts to curb illegal immigration, say enforcement advocates concerned about her expected nomination to be the Homeland Security secretary under President Barack Obama. [Snip]
But Napolitano opposes a border fence, supports expanding a controversial technology visa program and favors a ''stringent pathway to citizenship.''
[that's grand.]
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A Quick Backgrounder on Lashkar-e-Taiba
There is a lot of talk about Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group that is strongly suspected of being behind last week's terror assault in Mumbai, India. (Snip) There are a lot of people out there twisting themselves in knots to disassociate Lashkar-e-Taiba from al Qaeda. They are wrong to do so. Lashkar-e-Taiba has an extensive network in southern and Southeast Asia. A senior US military intelligence official described the group as "al Qaeda junior,"
[the real point: the franchise of terrorism is growing, because our actions are encouraging it...]
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Off the Table
[HT:WH]
Islam was born as a religion spread through violence. There is a direct line from the prophet Muhammad to today’s Islamic terrorists, whose latest deadly attacks wreaked havoc in Mumbai, India. The ongoing effort in the United Nations and the politically correct media to disassociate Islam from terrorism is a sham.
Just days before the Mumbai attack, a United Nations Committee passed a resolution entitled “Combating Defamation of Religions”, which will be going to the General Assembly for approval in mid-December. It is one in a series of such resolutions pushed by the Organization of Islamic Conference. While ostensibly applying to all religions, it refers only to Islam by name. The text “expresses deep concern … that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.”
The New York Times’ lead news stories in the aftermath of the Mumbai massacre played right into the Organization of Islamic Conference’s campaign of obfuscation. It omitted the central fact that the terrorists who murdered more than 170 innocent people were fanatical Islamists. The Times referred to them simply in generic terms as “gunmen”, “attackers”, and “militants'... [snip]
The truth makes no difference to the politically correct crowd at the New York Times and other left-wing media in the West, not to mention at the United Nations. They refuse to acknowledge the centrality of Islamic religious dogma to the scourge of terrorism we are witnessing all over the world. We will continue to reap the tragedies that they are sowing so long as we are lulled by their propagandists and the obliging left-wing media into whitewashing the truth about the core terrorist nature of Islam...
[hence 'GWOT']
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Muslim cemetary in Mumbai refuses to bury gunmen
[credit where due]
Mumbai, India — A Muslim graveyard has refused to bury nine gunmen who terrorized Mumbai over three days last week, leaving at least 172 people dead and wreaking havoc at some of its most famous landmarks.
The men are not true followers of the Islamic faith, according to the influential Muslim Jama Masjid Trust, which runs the 7.5-acre Badakabrastan graveyard in downtown Mumbai.
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Girl strangled slowly for family's honour
A JORDANIAN man slowly strangled his 16-year-old married sister, using wire and the girl's scarf, after she visited a female friend because he had to "cleanse family honour". After jailing the unidentified 20-year-old man for seven years, Judge Hassan Amayreh said: "It took him 30 minutes to strangle his sister to death with a metal wire and her own scarf."
[our enemy]
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Situating Honorcide
When 16 year-old Aqsa Parvez of Mississauga, Ontario was strangled by her father for refusing to wear the hijab, Shahina Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Social Services Association, dissembled the murder as “the result of domestic violence, a problem that cuts across Canadian society and is blind to colour and creed” (National Post, December 12, 2007).
For Sheikh Yusuf Badat, Imam of the Islamic Foundation of Toronto, “It wasn’t about Islam” but merely a question “of parenting and anger management”; and Mohammed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, whitewashed the killing as a “teenage issue.” Mohhamad Al-Navdi of the Canadian Council of Imams, while regretting the slaying of the young girl, responded by stressing “the duty [of parents] to convince their kids that this [the hijab] is part of their culture.”
The real crime, apparently, was not the actual killing, but the “failure” of the parents to inculcate the proper religious ordinances and to control the adolescent tendency to domestic revolt. Sheikh Alaa Elsayed of the Islamic Society of North America Canada agreed: parents should teach their daughters “to do the right thing” (National Post, December 14, 2007). [snip]
Let us make no mistake about this. Pluralism and formulaic tolerance notwithstanding, to deny what is so vividly obvious is to lie outright...
[Recommended > ]
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'Defamation’ of Islam Resolution Set to Pass in UN
– A United Nations committee has passed a controversial “defamation of religions”.
The measure, which calls on all countries to ensure their legal systems provide protection against “acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions,” passed in the Third Committee by a 85-50 vote, with 42 countries abstaining.
This year the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has the support of two non-Muslim allies – Venezuela and Belarus – in co-sponsoring the resolution. Although the OIC says the campaign is aimed at protecting all faiths, once again only Islam is cited by name.
Flag of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the 57-member bloc of Islamic nations.
‘Importing anti-blasphemy prohibitions into human rights law’
Critics say Islamic states are trying to put Islam, and some of the more controversial practices associated with it, beyond censure.
“It is sad that once again the United Nations has endorsed an anti-blasphemy resolution, designed to curtail any criticism of Islam,” Becket Fund for Religious Liberty spokesman Tom Carter said Monday. [snip]
Third Committee secretary Moncef Khane said late Monday that the plenum vote generally closely follows the pattern of the final committee vote.
“Ninety-nine percent of the time the result does not change,” he explained, saying those occasions on which the final tally does differ it is usually because some delegations may have been out of the room during a draft resolution vote.
Khane said the [full] assembly would probably vote on the resolution between Dec. 18-22...
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then >
"Oppose UN defamation of Islam resolution"
US President mailto:president@whitehouse.gov
Obama transition http://www.change.gov/page/s/contact
Your Congressman https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml
Your Senator http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
The Climate-Change Reformation
The truth, alas, has proved too inconvenient to ignore. Among non-partisan researchers, there is now little doubt that human-generated carbon dioxide makes only an insignificant contribution to climate change. More importantly, there is agreement among virtually all climatologists that the planet is experiencing the beginnings of a cold spell, expected to last as long as 30 years, due to a decrease in solar activity. Most significantly, however, the tangible financial crisis has displaced concerns over the invisible climatological one. With the mercury plunging alongside the Dow Jones, the Gore age is on the way out.
In an op-ed in today’s New York Times, Gore dispenses with the elastic “findings” of various environmentalists, and simply tells climate-change skeptics to “wake up.” While he lays out a five-part “plan that would simultaneously move us toward solutions to the climate crisis and the economic crisis - and create millions of new jobs that cannot be outsourced,” he only gets down to proper CO2 fear-mongering in the last of his five points... [snip]
We’ll never know if Al Gore finally understands that he fell for an enormous and costly political scam. But he clearly realizes no one is throwing money into cooling the planet during a chilly recession. And he must sense that the collective American consciousness can only accommodate one overarching fiction at a time - costly Rube Goldberg energy schemes will be abandoned for broader drilling and revamped nuclear power initiatives.
[I'd like to think so, but many of us thought this scam thoroughly exposed in '06 - but the greennik's political-media rally in '07 proved they're weren't going to give up all that power and revenue without a fight. We'll need see Barack's influence - and likely remain vigilant...]
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Climate change juggernaut on the horizon, UN talks told
Poznan, Poland - War, hunger, poverty and sickness will stalk humanity if the world fails to tackle climate change, a 12-day UN conference on global warming heard on Monday. A volley of grim warnings sounded out at the start of the marathon talks, a step to a new worldwide treaty to reduce greenhouse gases and help countries exposed to the wrath of an altered climate...
[step one: control the language]
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The Global Warming Goons Want Your Little Ones
I bet Jim Jones is tooling around hell right now green with envy over the mind manipulation the global warming greenies are wielding upon our culture.
We’ve got green jobs, green cars, green dogs, green houses, green toilet paper and environmentally friendly green condoms. Everything now must become green or it is gone.
Because of the sick amount of cash involved, both sides of the political aisle have drunk so much of the Global Warming Kool-Aid that they are peeing green, and if we the sheeple don’t lock step to these unhinged fascist demands then we’re the devil...
There are several things that get me heated up over the global warmers’ hyperventilated horse smack. It’s stuff like:
- The specious science the global warblers put forth which establishes truth not by facts but through non-stop repetition.
- How the taxpayer dollar is floating this flotsam to the tune of $6 billion - a year. That’s more than we send to the National Cancer Institute and to AIDS research.
- The Gestapoesque censorship of “dissenters” and “deniers” of the global warming “facts” by the greenies. God help you if you don’t parrot their apocalyptic projections.
But worst of all: Congress is currently deliberating whether or not they should make “environment literacy training” a required course for your kids before they get to graduate.
Which brings me to the main point of this column and that which really ticks me off about the green freaks: namely, how they’re after our kids with their gospel of green...
["know thy enemy {'s tactics}" - Highly Recommended > ]
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TEXAS ENJOYS $11 BILLION SURPLUS
As most states scramble to patch holes in their budgets, Texas glides along unscathed. While California, New York, Florida, Michigan and Ohio make painful choices -- higher taxes, spending cuts, Texas has a surplus topping $11 billion. Why? Because the state doesn't have an income tax:
- States with income taxes have seen revenue plummet, especially in the Northeast and in Midwestern states.
- Texas is among several energy-producing states reporting no budget gap; others include Alaska, Louisiana, North Dakota and Wyoming. [but not California]
- Moreover, Gov. Rick Perry (R) has said Texas' economy is strong and continues to create jobs because of low taxes and conservative policies, and state leaders remain upbeat as the next legislative session approaches.
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WHY PERMANENT TAX CUTS ARE THE BEST STIMULUS
The incoming Obama administration and congressional Democrats are considering a second fiscal stimulus package, estimated at more than $500 billion, to follow the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. As they do, much can be learned by examining the first... [snip]
The major part of the first stimulus package was the $115 billion, temporary rebate payment program targeted to individuals and families that phased out as income rose. Most of the rebate checks were mailed or directly deposited during May, June and July. The argument for these temporary payments was that they would increase consumption, stimulate demand and get the economic growing again. Yet, they did absolutely nothing.
So what can Congress and the incoming Obama administration do to give the economy a real boost? Below are a few fairly bipartisan measures worth considering:
- Keep all income-tax rates were they are now, effectively making current tax rates permanent.
- Enact a worker's tax credit equal to 6.2 percent of wages up to $8,000, and make it permanent.
- Construct a government spending plan that meets long-term objectives, puts the economy on a path to budget balance and is expedited to the degree possible without causing waste and inefficiency.
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Media Fail to Connect Dots on Bailout
Have you noticed that the media largely fail to connect the dots between related events?
In all the reporting on the auto industry’s ills, little is said about the government as the chief cause. Politicians holler at auto executives in hearings and beat their chests in interviews, but never mention Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) mileage standards. Just like unaffordable union contracts (mentioned incredibly often by the same politicians who now wish to give the unions expanded), unchecked power wreaks the same destruction in other industries via the Employee Free Choice Act (which steals away free choice).
In all their reporting of how the sub-prime mortgage meltdown purportedly triggered the financial industry collapse (as a child’s sneeze might topple a meticulously constructed, floor to ceiling house of cards), they uttered hardly a word about Barney Frank and Gang’s push for financial institutions to provide mortgages to the woefully unqualified.
Nobody mentioned the the Clinton Administration’s push for home ownership as a God-given right to be facilitated at any cost, let alone the years of criminal conspiracy and obscene executive compensation at Fannie and Freddie...
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Barack Obama and the FDR-Great Depression Myth
The cover of Time magazine has Barack Obama photoshopped into Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous convertible, complete with oval-shaped glasses and cigarette holder held between the teeth. “The NEW New Deal,” The cover reads. Surely many who voted for Obama saw him as potentially the new FDR, the man to lead us out of hard economic times. But they’ve been misled, for even FDR wasn’t FDR. He is a quasi-mythical creature who not only didn’t end the Great Depression but probably greatly prolonged the nation’s economic agony with his New Deal programs and a menagerie of other foolish measures. Just look at the numbers... [click to enlarge]
Other economists, including Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas Jr. and the late Leonard Rapping concluded that the steady expansion of the money supply, but for FDR’s influence, should have ended the Depression in 1935. Even FDR Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau admitted the New Deal had failed.
“We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work,” he declared in 1939. “We have never made good on our promises...I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started...And an enormous debt to boot!”Yet Obama apparently either doesn’t know his history or doesn’t care. He’s just proposed what one news outlet called “a monster new 'new deal,'” supposedly a two-year plan aiming to create or protect 2.5 million jobs with massive deficit spending...
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PUTTING PATIENTS FIRST
Canada has a health care system where everything revolves around the system.
When Medicare was introduced it was supposed to be a floor, meaning no one would suffer because they didn't have access to necessary healthcare. What it has evolved into is a ceiling where no one is allowed better health care than what the government will give them, says Dr. Brian Day, an orthopedic surgeon and ex-president of the Canadian Medical Association.
Instead, patients need to be put at the center of this universe and everything else should revolve around them. According to Day, under a system of patient-centered care:
- The patient would, first of all, be looked at as the consumer of healthcare; when you go to any institution, you need to be looked upon as a valued asset, and that's what is missing from the way patients are treated now.
- Hospitals would switch from block-funding to money-follows-the-patient funding; thus, creating competition between private and public companies and competition between the different public hospitals.
[the inevitable evolution of government run health care]
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BOYZ N THE BOOK
A Rip Van Winkle waking up from a 30-year nap on a college campus today would notice a strange change in the student body. Most of the students walking past him would be women. [snip]
- A generation ago, women made up less than half the student body.
- But in 2005 they made up 57 percent of total fall enrollments, and the Department of Education estimates the gender discrepancies will increase every year in the foreseeable future.
- In 2005-06, graduation rates favored women by 26 percent in terms of earning bachelor's degrees, and 33 percent in master's degrees.
[imagine the media coverage if such trend lines were detrimental to women - they're not, so nothing to worry about evidently]
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The true school scandal
It's no scandal when politicians chooses a private school. The scandal is the toleration of the abattoir called a public school.
According to data compiled by the Washington Post in 2007, of the 100 largest school districts in the country, D.C. ranks third in spending for each student, around $13,000 a pupil, but last in spending on instruction. More than half of every dollar of education spending goes to the salaries of administrators. Test scores are abysmal; the campuses are often unsafe.
The main reason politicians adopt a policy of malign neglect: teachers unions, arguably the single worst mainstream institution in our country today. No group has a stronger or better organized stranglehold on a political party than they do. No group is more committed to putting ideological blather and self-interest before the public good.
The Democratic Party continues to tolerate this sort of thing because public school teachers continue to be reliably liberal voters. And their unions cut big checks...
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Daschle lobby ties bump Obama vow
Barack Obama’s expected pick of former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to be secretary of health and human services bumps up against the president-elect’s pledge to rid the White House of special interests.
The former Democratic senator from South Dakota is a special policy adviser for the lobbying law firm Alston & Bird. And in his three years there, the firm has earned more than $16 million representing some of the health care industry’s most powerful interests before the department he’s in line to lead...
[I.e., DHHS {Dept. of Health and Human Safety} is the department which contains the agency that regulates food and drugs - aka; FDA. no conflict of interest here - move along...]
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NOW CNN Warns That we 'Barely Know' Obama?
CNN is warning Americans that already making Barack Obama into one of America's greatest "heroes" may not be a good idea. Despite the fact that Barack Obama has yet to take office, despite that he has yet to really do anything to earn that status, CNN is saying that "already, he's being compared to the most remarkable leaders."
It might make one amazed that now, after cheerleading for him for the last four years, CNN suddenly finds that calling Obama a hero is not necessarily the best idea. "The Americans who are comparing him to those remarkable predecessors," CNN warns, "are putting a lot of faith in a man they barely know."
And why do we "barely know" Barack Obama, CNN? [after 22 months of campaigning?]
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