Bashing the hornet's nest: the death of a madman

"Good news for America," says General Barry McCaffery.

Color me skeptical.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm tickled that one with such a vehement hatred of human life and freedom has met justice in this life even as he now in death meets with justice in the next (Hebrews 9:27), but I do not believe that his death will stem the tide of Islamic terrorism against the Christian, Jewish, and secular world.

We hit a hornet's nest with a baseball bat and killed the queen.  Think the hornets will be happy?

Another talking head just suggested that U.S. military action in the Middle East has revolved around getting this man.  That, boys and girls, is the problem.  Kill the queen and the hornets will make another queen.  And what about the hundred and fifty other hornet's nests that surround the house and even infest the house?

Until America and especially American Muslims begin to take a stand against that breed of Islam that wants to annihilate anything outside of Islam, we'll continue focusing on a single hornet's nest and then get stung very badly from places we least expect it (U.S. Army majors, Afghani "allies", etc.).

Consider the man who pushed whatever button required pushing to remove breath from this man's lungs.  He could have a gajillion dollar book deal and movie deal.  He would get ticker tape parades.  He'd be on every talk show and news show in America and Europe.  Problem is that if that man's name ever gets out, he'll have a price on his head and will have to live a life incognito.  Why?  Because bin Laden is not the problem.

During WWII, folks understood that if you took out Hitler, you killed Nazi Germany.  Militant, Koran-reading, Koran-believing, Koran-living Islam has no such figure.  It continues to spread in Europe and the United States, in prisons and in Dearborn.  These folks will not delight in their queen being squashed.

I hope I'm wrong.

Just another day: Fun at the Arab Fest

Thomas Sowell wrote a piercing piece earlier this week on the erosion of the rule of law in our land and the increased frequency with which our government operates outside its constitutional border.  Sadlly, most folks won't take the time to read it.  No pictures.  And it's about government.  Yawn.  We'd rather watch the World Cup.

The ideas Mr. Sowell discusses do not exist within the realm of theory alone.  What he argues has begun tapping on the shoulders of folks like you and me and hauling them off to jail.

For those with a cursory understanding of American geography, Dearborn, Michigan evokes blue collar imagery.  Hard-working factory folks on the skirts of Detroit.  Does it make you think of mosques?  It should.  Did you know Dearborn has one of the largest Islamic populations in the country?  Indeed.

It should come as no surprise that Christians compelled to preach the Gospel of salvation in Christ alone would seek to share that good news at Dearborn's annual "Arab Festival."  As Christ himself said, the healthy do not need a physician, and so a few bold Christians sought out the masses of sick.

Oops, bad choice.  I guess discussing what Muslims believe in the hope of having an open door to present the hope of the Gospel at an Arab festival is not protected by the Constitution.  These folks were not part of the Westboro Baptists, that foul group of individuals that picket funerals and carry heinious placards and that has little understanding for what the Bible plainly states.  The arrested individuals went with cameras (for their protection) to seek out those willing to talk.

It earned them abuse from the "security team" and arrest from the local police.  Neat.  Read it and watch the videos here.  Maybe one day on American streets the voices of Christians proclaiming a free and restored relationship with God through Christ will be silenced.  Then where will we be?

Ironic note. Drudge reports this afternoon that an earthquake felt from "Detroit to Buffalo" rumbled across the northern tier.  5.0 on Lord Richter's scale.

Ironic note II (here).  "Lord," as in "the year of our LORD," is being removed from a Connecticut high school's diplomas.  Neat.  That's surely offended three or four people over the past century.

Ironic note III (here and here).  There's a liberal bias to college's summer reading lists.  A whopping 2% of recommended books were considered conservative.  Well, it's something.  At least gay lit is taking off (here).

Sorry for the digressions, let's get back to Dearborn.  You might not like to hear the Gospel and you might not want to receive a pamphlet discussing what the Bible says, but you have the freedom to pass the person by or to trash the pamplet.  You do not have the freedom to prevent the person from discussing that idea with others.  It's not Constitutional.  This is not Russia amidst the height of Communism.  It's not China under Mao.

It's America 2010.  Do you know where your freedoms are?

The one thing government does well...because it was intended to do so

I always found it funny when Hollywood fascists would say they supported our troops but hated what George Bush, their Commander in Chief (CinC) was doing with them.  You can't divorce the two anymore than you could the German troops from the funny-mustached freak ordering the gassing of six-million Jews.  Were there any consistency in Hollywood, they would have condemned the whole thing from the top down.

But Hollywood has a disconnect.  If they can fatten their wallets, they'll check their ideology and entertain at Ann Coulter's birthday soiree.  Since 90% of movie-going, song-downloading, and novel-reading America supported the wars against Koran-adhering Muslims, entertainers from every cloth found they could express their loathing for the war by hating its CinC and yet still making a buck by expressing their love for the ones pulling the triggers, dropping the bombs, and interrogating the head-chopping demons.

Well, ladies and gents, I hate the cliff over which our President has just shoved us.  Yes, yes, yes, the momentum went unchecked and increased under conservative presidents.  It did nearly slow to a halt under Reagan, but GBI and GBII both continued the vector and speed, if not hastening it along, that began nearly four-score and seven ago under the great socialist, FDR.

While I can't logically separate the order-giver (now Obama) from the order-executors (the troops), I can logically separate his policies economic from his policies foreign and military.  While our national fabric unravels faster than lawmakers sell their souls, our military continues to execute honorable orders with exceptional honor.  For your edification, here's a peek at what's going on in Afghanistan from one who is there (boldface, mine.  All parentheticals, etc., are his).

This global war on terror (I don't work at the White House, so I can still use that term) is truly a war against evil. It is difficult to compare levels of evil, so I cannot make a direct correlation between the forces our country faced in WWII with the current insurgency in Afghanistan. But I do know that our coalition forces now face a challenge that our troops rarely faced in WWII - the enemy does not wear a uniform. It is often incredibly difficult to determine who is a civilian and who is an insurgent, and they usually have only seconds to make a decision where their lives literally depend on what action they take against possible threats.

The insurgents proclaim they are waging holy and honorable jihad against the West and call for the assassination of a cartoonist because he mocked their prophet; yet they think it is perfectly appropriate and honorable to use the following tactics:

• using an vehicle disguised as an ambulance to blow up checkpoints.
• male insurgents dressing up in female burkas (using our sensitivity to not offend their cultural and religious traditions) to infiltrate and commit homicide bombings.
• placing IEDs in schools and playgrounds to kill children in their own country in an attempt to show the people that the government cannot protect them.
• bombing girls' schools to show their disapproval of females receiving an education.
• using women and children to shield themselves while firing on our troops because they know we will not risk civilian casualties to take them out.

These tactics can all be found in public sources.


I highlight the evil we are waging war against because I want people at home to understand that we are conducting an honorable campaign over here. I am not naive enough to believe that we never have folks who act dishonorably over here in the heat of battle; but I do believe they are an aberration, not the rule. I believe that if we do not win this war here, then rest assured, these radical forces WILL stretch across the oceans and WILL attack our country. They will only rest after our destruction. And lest you think we are selfish or imperialistic in this battle, there are twice as many Islamic Afghans fighting against the insurgency in their homeland. They desire to be free from terrorism and are willing to die for freedom (and they are dying as much as our NATO forces).

While Rome is burning and Nero's fiddling away, the troops remain in a valaint fight at the Rubicon.  Will there be anything left of their beloved Italia when the victory abroad is won?

America's enemy...like it or not

Why do we genuflect to Islam?  When folks blow up abortion clinics or riddle doctors with bullets who perform such heinous procedures, the news media's immediate focus is upon whether his religion had anything to do with it, and if there was a hint of "Jesus Christ" anywhere in his motivations, that becomes the lead.  If the motivation behind a perpetrator of evil has a hint of Islam in it, that fact is ignored, buffered, or buried.

Mark Steyn exposes this double-standard and "the hole at the heart of our strategy" in the Global War on Terror in his eponymous article yesterday (here).  He notes,

...We’re scrupulously non-judgmental about the ideology that drives a man to fly into a building or self-detonate on the subway, and thus we have a hole at the heart of our strategy. We use rhetorical conveniences like “radical Islam” or, if that seems a wee bit Islamophobic, just plain old “radical extremism.” But we never make any effort to delineate the line which separates “radical Islam” from non-radical Islam. Indeed, we go to great lengths to make it even fuzzier.

 Steyn laments the media's dainty dances around the issue of Major Hasan's foundational worldview (Islam) and exposes their contentment with the his self-identified religious preference ("none").  But he did have a worldview.  And he did have a religious preference.  And they erupted with hellish fury.

...The pathologies that drive al-Qaeda beat within Major Hasan too, and in the end his Islamic impulses trumped his expensive Western education, his psychiatric training, his military discipline — his entire American identity.

How long will we pussyfoot around this IED before it blows up in our backyard? Ask the folks in Kileen, Texas.

Steyn recognizes,

The vast majority of Muslims don’t conspire to kill cartoonists or murder their daughters or shoot dozens of their fellow soldiers. But Islam inspires enough of this behavior to make it a legitimate topic of analysis.

And here's the rub:

What happened to those men and women at Fort Hood had a horrible symbolism: Members of the best trained, best equipped fighting force on the planet gunned down by a guy who said a few goofy things no one took seriously. And that’s the problem: America has the best troops and fiercest firepower, but no strategy for throttling the ideology that drives the enemy — in Afghanistan and in Texas.

If it walks like a duck: Ft Hood revisited

The initial facts?  Mass murder.  Arabic name.  My initial guess and my immediate post?  Islam.

More than twenty-four hours have passed and more clues bubble to the surface.  "Allahu Akbar!"  Militant Islamic web-sites.  Opposition to the wars against terrorists motivated by Islam ("terrorists motivated by Islam."  Is that redundant?).

"Hmmm...," muse the reporters.  "What could be the motive?  What's the common thread?"

David Horowitz provides the scathing answer.  After asking PC America to extract its head from the dark recesses of its blithe oblivion, he indicts what must be indicted, Islam.  Read it here.

It might tweak our multi-cultural sensitivities but 99% of the terrorist attacks against America over the last thirty years have not been conducted by Norwegians Against Lutefisk or GM-loathing Japanese but by those who take the Quran for what it says.  All of it.

I do understand that 90% of Muslims don't detonate at Dillards, but it's the really enormous ten-percent that are making quite a bit of racket.  The micro-efforts of the 90% to shut them up that give me pause at 2 a.m.

Please don't do the moral-equivalence hustle declaring how radical Christians are just as bad as radical Muslims.  Let me ask you when the last time you heard about Christians murdering Muslims while singing "Onward Christian Soldier" (with apologies to the hymnals that have emasculated the soldier right out of that song)?  If you want to readjust your focus on the major world religions, read the following essay by Raymond Ibrahim (yes, that's an Arab sounding name, isn't it?), "Are Judaism and Christianity as Violent as Islam?"  It'll take a few moments, but it's worth the time.

So where do we go from here?  Should we bust the doors down of every mosque from Tampa to Tacoma?  NO!  With every ounce of my being, NO!  Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Muhammad Ali, when they converted to Islam, only threatened those who met them on the field of friendly strife, sport (thousands of Muslims serve in our military with honor).  But there is a rancid flavor of Islam that loathes the west and anything remotely Judeo or Christian.  That scourge should be asked politely to leave the country.  Considering authoritites knew Major Hasan had been dabbling in such web-sites and had held such opions for over a half-dozen months, they know where these roaches are hiding.  How about a little Raid in those crevices?

To those who read the Quran as a book of peace, thank you!  Now can you do something to quiet down your uppity cousins?  They're giving the rest of you guys a really bad name. 

There is a huge divide in Islam in America.  Read about it here, where a couple of bugs are spreading their filth outside a peaceful mosque in NYC.  Show these vermine the door.  Or the heel of your shoe.

Keep praying for the families who have lost so very much during this tragedy.  And pray for Major Hasan's family.  They seem to be shocked that he has done something so heinous.  If they're in the 90%, this is as horrible a time for them as for any.

Until next time, "if it is possible, as far as it depends upon you, live at peace with all men." (That's Bible, not Quran).

Revising revisionism

Have you heard the one about those horrid Puritans, the ones who initiated the witch trials The Crucible made famous? Yes, I know you have. Thank you, Arthur Miller. But did you know that the government sentenced the women and that the preachers of the day, led prominently by Cotton Mather, ended the lunacy? No, I didn't think so. We prefer a playwright's history.

And the Crusades. You have heard how those horrid Christians (a theme?) attempted to drive the peace-loving Arabs from their homeland, haven't you? Let's put a bit of focus on this most recently blurred of historic events.

Many thanks to my good friend, Jeff, for passing this on to me. Dr. Peter Hammond, the article's authoer, has spent 26 years as a Christian missionary among the Arab peoples of Africa and especially the Sudan. He has also researched, far more than I have, the Crusades.

Anyway, here's the article (here, really) titled "Jihad and Crusades." It's a lengthy read, but it's stuff that was common knowledge a few centuries ago. Thanks to the post-modern slop taught in 97% institutes of any learning, most of us don't get such information.

Let it ricochet around in your mind for a few days, then turn on the tube and see what Iran's up to in the eradication-of-Israel department.

------------------------------------------
For further review on this topic, I've linked another article, "What were the Crusades all about?" here.

Just another day: I'm all shook up

• RUMBLE. It made the news web-sites this morning, but you know, other things happened during the day so it's fallen off the page. What's 'it'? The earth moved. Again. And again. And still again.
  
  The earth's shaking like mad. Today alone, world-wide, the earth fidgeted at a magnitude greater than 5.0 twenty times. Two-zero. Four of those readjusts topped 6.0. Yesterday, in the South Pacific, site of last weeks major burbles, they cleared 7.o three times with a near miss at 6.7.
  
  The world's weaving more than a teen texting while driving (here). Were I merely a student of geology, I would find this unsettling, but I'm a student of theology. Jesus Christ declared with sober certainty that he would return to the earth. The intro to this event?
  

  "For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs."

  Is Jesus Christ's return to the earth imminent? That I can't say with certainty. I believe it to be so. What I do know for sure is that we are one day closer than when Jesus spoke to his disciples and the earth won't stop shaking.
  


• ONE IN FOUR. Another article hit the cyber-news sites this morning and disappeared shortly after lunch. Pew research indicates that over one-quarter of the world's population (1.57 b-b-b-b-billion) is now Muslim (here). This is groovy so long as those Muslims are your run-of-the-mill neighbor who doesn't mind going to the pool, bagging your pork at the grocery store, toting your St. Bernard in his cab, or leaving your head on your shoulders.
  
  Conservative estimates, though, indicate that ten percent of Muslims are of the more irritable variety, the kind whose fashion includes vests lined with C4 and a matching belt with detonator buckle. Ten percent of 1.57 b-b-b-b-billion is (math in public...carry the five...) 157 million. That's just under half the population of the United States. Hmmm...
  
  The AP article linked above makes it seem that many of these Muslims aren't just of Arab heritage. They note that more Muslims now live in Germany than in Lebanon. In itself that's an impressive stat, but paltry few of those German Muslims are named Hans or Fritz. You see, Germany has an enormous population of Muslims (as does most of Europe) because of immigration. From the Middle East. So just because the Muslims are German Muslims, they're still named Abdul and Mohammed.

Just thought you'd like to know. 'Til next time, eyes to the east.

Eurabia marches on

I'm a news junkie. Well, not so much the raw news. I enjoy a cogent analysis on particular issues. Toss in a bit of wit and a hint of mastery of the mother tongue, and you have me hooked. That's why you'll see me frequently citing Jay Nordlinger and Mark Steyn, both of National Review. You might not like the conclusion, but you'll find the argumentation taught and you'll likely find yourself chuckling (at least smiling) along the way.

As usual, I enjoyed Nordlinger's "Impromptus" at National Review Online this morning. You may find his topics today dull. I wanted to toss you one quote pertaining to his recent trip to Europe, France in particular.

"I saw signs and such translated into two languages: English and Arabic. When I first started going to France, the only translation was into English, and possibly German. This confirms an important change."

That last sentence? Understatement!

The first time I heard of the mass immigration from the Middle East into Europe was when I read Steyn's book, "America Alone." I've spoken about it at length before. His point is that plummeting birthrates in the west and Arab/Islamic immigration into the west (coupled with sizable birthrates) is hurtling us toward a cataclysmic clash of civilizations.

Since then we see problems with "troubled youths" rioting in France (Muslims), sharia law in conflict with civil law in Great Britain, and the Islamic political party becoming the fast growing political party in the Netherlands. When Geert Wilders makes a film warning about the intolerance of Islamic society, his indicted for hate crimes in his own country and not permitted entrance into Great Britain to speak at Parliament (how does one pronounce that?). This is not to mention bombings nor cartoonist beheadings.

We've had our own challenges with increased conflict with Islamic society in, of all places, Minnesota and Michigan. Young ladies who convert to Christianity from Islam our having to flee for their lives from their own families on our soil!! A TV producer ritually killing his wife garnered a bit of ink, but the relationship between Islam and such atrocities has been utterly ignored by the Obama-entranced media.

Much like immigrants into the United States over the past centuries, as long as folks are coming to be part of this country, swell! When folks move in and begin butting heads, now we've got problems.

Everything south of the Mason-Dixon is double-typed in Ingles y Espanol, how long before Arabic script begins showing up in St. Paul and those "troubled and uppity youths" start using cars to light up the midnight sky in Madison?

The beauty of an Islamic nation

Want to get a tiny flavor of the freedom and temperance flowing within Iran?

"Every aspect of a non-Muslim is unclean," proclaimed Iran's late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. He explained that non-Muslims rank between "feces" and "the sweat of a camel that has consumed impure food.""

Personally I'm hoping I run a little closer to camel sweat. In any case, such statements from the head of Islam in Iran help those of us who've not had the pleasure of touring their lovely country understand the broad tolerance they have for those outside the boundaries of Islam.

For these folks, they believe two worlds exist. They believe that those who have embraced Islam are part of Dar al Salaam, "The world of peace." The rest of us between dung and camel sweat reside in Dar al Harb, "The world of war."

Read what what a couple brainiacs are saying about life inside Ahmadinejahd's Iran here.

Maybe I'm just getting uppity, but I'm still waiting for the Islamic moderates and liberals of the world to rise up to shut up their virulent cousins.

Minnesota

Cut me, do I not bleed 10,000 lakes? The Minnesota of my youth, a wondrous mystical place, is now a place of distant nostalgia.

The last couple days, the Twins played the Texas Rangers in Arlington. Living in Texas, I get to see all the Rangers games and have adopted them as a pseudofavorite since a I rarely get to see the Twins play. Watching them both slug it out for three days was a real treat.

Watching the Twins vaults me to the time of Killebrew, Carew, Allison, Blyleven, and Kaat. While the Twins have remained as scrappy as ever and the lakes haven't lost their luster, Minnesota is not the place I left.

When Al Franken earns a senate seat, something has tipped in the cosmos. Has Minnesota has lost its political mind? First Jessie Ventura. An aberration, I thought. But Al Franken?!? Outright insanity. You don't elect a cartoon to political office.

But it's not just in politics where Minnesota has changed. A recent news article highlighted Minneapolis' problems with Somali gangs (here). What's mostly from absent from the article is any reference to Islam. The predominant religion in Somalia is Sunni Muslim. For a comparison, that's Saudi Arabia's freedom-focused, laissez faire brand of religion. [Saudi Arabia is the source of funding for what have become a drove of Islamic charter schools, the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy one of their shiny pennies going so far as to refuse to fly the American flag (here).]

What's to blame for the problem with the Somali gangs? The article suggests the standard socialist saws: poverty, bias of authorities. Hmmm...how about refusal to assimilate? Unwillingness to submit to US law? Poverty driving that? Nope. Minnesota, like Michigan, has an infestation of fundamentalist Muslims, the kind who don't want to play well with others, the kind remove the opposition not with the vote but with the scimitar or the C4 vest. The FBI is right to be watching the Twin Cities' Somali community (here).

What about the Somalis and the Muslims who do want to live in peace on Minnesota soil? They should be distancing themselves from their mutant cousins and decrying all such conduct. Say the pledge. Fly the flag. Or move out. Perhaps those are the Somalis who have lost their lives at the hands of the demons.

Al Franken is bad enough, but if this keeps up, brats will be banished from the ballpark and the National Anthem is sure to follow.

In praise of...what???

America's genuflector-in-chief has fulfilled his campaign promise and given a speech in an Islamic capitol. It went south from the outset.

In laying the foundation for the current conflict, our President laid the blame chiefly at the feet of the west.

"More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam."

Seems to me that since the middle of the last century, most Arabic speaking nations were led by Islamic leaders. Where there was a form of western government, many of those nations shook off the cumbersome ideas of freedom and responsibility and wrapped themselves in sharia and beheadings. So were the 9-11 pilots thinking about Lord Balfour? Was it Jefferson's intolerance of the Barbary pirates that caused bombings in Berlin and Madrid? Or was it a passion to live out the Koran against those explicitly denoted as infidels therein?

Islam itself has fed the tensions between Islam and the west. President Obama states that its "a small but potent minority of Muslims" who has wreaked this havoc upon the west. Really? Let's look at two recent events to put that silliness to rest.

Less than a week ago, a pro-life man murdered the most brutal abortion doctor in the country, George Tiller. Immediately, pro-life groups both Christian and non- decried the anarchy and labeled it as evil an act as a single abortion, wholly outside the rule of law. Proabortion groups (and a pro-abortion President) spoke of the evil of murder as an acceptable tack to take when opposed to abortion. Both sides recognized and spoke out against the brutality.

One day later, an Islamic man murdered a military recruiter, William Long, and wounded another in South Carolina. The media coverage was minimal. While MSNBC covered Tiller for 48 hours running and became the face of the news on all the major networks, the consistent fruit of Islam is hardly mentioned across the board. Olbermann states that Fox News and all pro-lifers are culpable for Tiller's death. Where's such rhetoric against Islam? And the President was as quiet as a library. No comments for those under his command. The death of one of his troops at the hand of the member of a group that loathes our country warranted no comment from the Commander-in-Chief?

And where are the Arab or Islamic groups speaking out against the murder of US military recruiters? Shhh. Listen for it. It's the sound of silence.

Anarchy regarding abortion? Unacceptable, say all sides. Anarchy from Muslims toward the west? Unacceptable...says the west. Yes, ten-percent of all Muslims may be fanatical, but the majority of the Muslim world agrees with the fanatics or doesn't have the cajones to speak against them.

The President calls for "mutual respect" by unveiling to all the world the Islamic side of the American presidency. He highlights his Christian faith when in Rick Warren's church when it's politically expedient. When on Islamic soil, he checks the Bible at Andrews AFB and picks up the Koran and lauds his Islamic heritage. Rather than stand as a Christian President from a Christian nation, he folds like an origami camel.

As with most bullies, aquiescence is weakness and deserving of another punch in the nose. Keep your eyes peeled. I suspect another jab or left hook is not far off.

With whom are we at war?

Imagine if this came across CNN or Fox News:

"This just in. Focus on the Family has taken responsibility for the terrorist explosion that ripped a marketplace in Berkley, California. Seven were reported dead and dozens injured. This brings the 2009 total to 97 innocents killed by the army led by born-again Christian preacher, James Dobson.

"Elsewhere in the world, rockets continue to rain down on the peace-loving hamlet of Greenwich Village. Pat Robertson, charismatic leader of the militant Christian organization, the 700 Club, has vowed to continue the rocket attacks until "Greenwich is turned to a heap of rubble." The fanatical Christian group has been at odds with this tranquil homosexual community ever since Robertson rose to power when the heavily Christian Moral Majority came to power and began screaming its venomous rhetoric in the mid-70's.

"Samaritan's Purse, the organization begun by Franklin Graham, son of the well-known Christian zealot, Billy Graham, has taken to piracy on the high seas. With a fleet of ships with a blood-soaked lamb emblazoned on the side, the junior Graham and his rabble have terrorized the high seas off the coast of Martha's Vinyard, hijacking toys and supplies destined for the impoverished children of Madonna and Brad and Angelina and the children in Oprah's schools."

If these fictional scenarios had any truth behind them, would there be any doubt about who had declared war upon our nation? Let's say, too, that the Vatican was battling the Romans and that moderate Christian Americans were mostly silent in the wake of the horrors wrought by their Christian brethren. Would our media and our leaders tap dance around the common denominator behind all these events?

It would be much easier, in this fictional instance, if the majority of Christians rose up and cited chapter and verse of God's word in opposition to the "terrorists," but if that majority remains silent, what are we left to surmise? They have given tacit approval.

In the mean time, our leaders continue to play Scrabble with terms and thereby remove the true identity of those who hate America and Americans. And the media lets them.

QotD: Fantasy Island

"We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over so many centuries to shape the world for the better, including my own country."

Barack Obama, President of the United States

Okay, Mr. President, can you name one thing Islam has done for the betterment of the United States in say, oh, the last 500 years?

The fruits of Islam within the US and Europe today show it to be the most divisive force to national and cultural identity the civilized west has ever seen. Yes, peaceful Muslims to abide within our borders, but they are not the tidal wave within Islam today. They are not standing against the advocates of Sharia law. They are not shutting up the cabbies who won't take fares that tote whiskey. They don't stifle those offended by the blind bringing their seeing-eye dog into Walmart.

Until Muslims unite vocally and forcefully against those who seek to impose Islamic law upon the west, Islam will continue to divide and fragment western civilization.

Please name just one thing, Mr. President.

We'll take him!

Geert Wilders couldn't get into Britain. Banished, he was. Indicted in his own country, too. Hmmm...hundreds of years ago, the outcasts of Europe sought a place they could go and be welcomed to live their life. Hmmm...

The irony that Geert Wilders has come to the United States.

He spent the last few days making the talk show rounds. O'Reilly and Beck last night. Hannity tonight. All Fox. MSNBC? It's all Mardi Gras. Anyway, where Mr. Wilders could not show his film Fitna at Parliament, he will be showing it to our Congress. I wonder if Keith Ellison will walk?

Maybe we have a pulse, yet.

If we do, it's waning. Thomas Sowell wrote the most impassioned piece I've read from his pen. Pretty feisty for seventy-nine. Sadly, he's got bigger cajones than most of our pablum sucking politicians.

...There are moral corrosions within ourselves that weaken our ability to face the challenges ahead.

Give him a read (here) and pray that God blows the wind in our favor.

The demise of moderate Islam

Let's see, we're over two weeks removed from the ritual beheading of a beautiful Islamic woman at the hands of her husband, and only now does a story surface on how Muslims are handling this PR crisis in America. That's the story. No visceral condemnation.

Eric Gorski in his AP article stated, "At least nine mosques, imams and Islamic organizations also agreed to denounce domestic violence at the behest of a coalition of Muslims that organized after (her) death." Oooh. That's bold. Denounce domestic violence. And only after a healthy prodding. Gorski's article asks some hard questions that many news outlets won't ask (read it, here).

Mark Steyn, ever with the watchful eye on Islam's spread, notes the shriveling of the moderate fraction of Islam in his recent National Review column (another tight, cogent read, here). In it, he provides more detail on the Islamic thuggery behind Geert Wilders ban from Britain.

I am not an Islamic bigot. If I see a Muslim, I don't itch to bead him before my 9mm. They, like me, are created in God's image. I have a Muslim in my neighborhood who seems to be a dandy neighbor. Many Muslims, a not insignificant percentage, would like to see the planet rid of folks like me. That cannot be ignored.

Until the cry goes out from within Islam against the losers who blow buildings, slaughter civilians, and behead their brides, we must be vigilant against this growing strain that seeks not only the demise of innocents but also the demise of civilizations. Our civilization.

Until the cry goes out, profile! Profile at the airports, profile at the mosques, profile at the Islamic charter schools that refuse to fly the American flag and that receive the preponderance of their funding from Riyadh. My grandma has heart medicine in her ditty bag, not C4. The kid your wanding has a PSP and some jerky in his backpack and not plastique.

Were I an Islamic man with the swarthy complexion of a Fertile Crescent native, I would be the loudest in the paper decrying the butcheries. I would be on local radio and TV stations explaining the peaceful nature of my purported religion of peace. I'd be screaming it from the housetops, and at the same time, I would be pleading with the police to profile any who looked like me to root the demons out of their dens.

Instead, we get a group trying to figure out how to repair its public image. They might start by cleaning house.

Geert Wilders

Blame the Jews for the world financial crisis? Okey-dokey.

Put a crucifix in a beaker of urine? Art!

Make a film highlighting the dangers of Koran-adhering Islam? Bigot! Intolerant! Hate-inciting criminal!

Truly. Geert Wilders, a member of Dutch Parliament, made such a film and for it was indicted by his own country and not permitted to enter Great Britain to show his film to their parliament.

Civil rights outcry? As quiet as an English church on Sunday (or German or French...pick your Old World country).

Europe as we knew it is dead. Eurabia is metastisizing. Read all about it here.

BTW: Drudge, CNN, and Fox News have finally picked up on a wife's beheading in New York state by her husband, the founder of one of the first Islamic television stations in the US. That only took four days!

Just another day: What goes up...

• Iran's launch. No, not a new web-site. And not Ahmadinejad out a window. They put a satellite in orbit (here). Neato, huh? Until the satellite is made with weapons grade uranium, plutonium, etc., and rather than staying in orbit, it comes down...we know not where. But they do. Neato, huh?


• North Korean irony. Coincidence that ill Kim Jong and his rabble announced a pending long-range missile test (here)? Now who would North Korea have issues with that they would need long-range missiles? Hmmm...
  

• Independence Day irony. The movie. It's on tonight. Tuned in briefly and caught this repartee between the President played by Bill Pullman and an alien in the process of choking the daylights out of a former scientist played by Brent Spiner.

  President: There can be peace between us, if we can find a way to coexist. Can there be peace between us?
  
  Alien choking Spiner: No peace.
  
  President: What do you want from us?
  
  ACS: Die.

  Ah, sounds like the regimes of the previous two bullets, doesn't it. President Obama's going to have to have some supernatural savvy to appease those folks who want no appeasement; they only want our demise.
  
  In the movie, the ACS tries to off the President with his alien mind trick, but the cool USAF dude with his pistol blows him to pieces. After he's recovered, the President sobers up to the silliness of his former negotiations. Remember what he said?
  

  President: Nuke'em. Nuke the $#@%&*@$!

  Sometimes Hollywood gets it right.

• Chimeras: Hey, guess what! Scientists have discovered that animal-human clones don't work (here)! Reading between the lines, they're going to keep at it, though. God have mercy...or something.
  

• Technological Singularity: Huh? Yeah, I didn't get it either, even after reading the article (here). Seems that Google and NASA have cyber-birthed a new university to bring the moon into the seventh house and to align Jupiter with Mars. A bit about the university from the article:
  

  "Proponents say that during the singularity, machines will be able to improve themselves using artificial intelligence and that smarter-than-human computers will solve problems including energy scarcity, climate change and hunger."

  Unless Al Gore and the Davos Summit team beat them to it.
  
  One final quote caught my attention. Consider it the comedic part of this post:

  “The day before something is truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.”

  That from the vice-chancellor to the university. He failed to note that when the breakthrough doesn't occur, the crazy idea remains a crazy idea.
  

That's enough for now. We are one day closer. Sleep tight.

Moderate Muslims: Winning over skeptics

I've mentioned before how nice it would be to hear the Islamic world cry out against demons personified who slaughter all things civilized. I think Horton's Whos could be more easily heard. An article in USA Today today reminded me of the sound of Islamic silence (I don't recommend the read, but for disclosure's sake you can find it here).

The gist of the article: because of the recent Jewish "war in Gaza," Obama will continue to support Israel against Gaza's democratically elected government. The same old saw. It's the Jews' fault. America will continue to support the Jewish state. Palestinians will remain oppressed.

One sentence in the opening paragraph stuck in my craw:

"If President-elect Barack Hussein Obama really wants to improve America's standing in the Muslim world, he'll need to do more to win over skeptics such as Muhammad Zia Ullah (a suq merchant in Pakistan)."

In light of the good faith that Muslims around the world are showing to Christians and Jews that's a reasonable request isn't it? Good grief.

How, pray tell, does Hamas show its good faith toward living in peace with the civilized world? Would lobbing love rockets into Israel be such a gesture. Perhaps taking out a school bus of Israeli children or a half-dozen citizens in a Haifa market with a couple sticks of C-4 strapped tenderly to your bosom. But, oh my, President Obama must contort like the Chinese Golden Acrobats to display his sincerity toward peace in the Middle East. Good grief.

(On a similar note, I received this video from a friend today...the other Keith. It's a little bit lengthy, but it's of an Arab woman, a secularist, taped on the Al-Jazeera network, exposing Islam for what it is. I wonder how much longer she'll be alive. It's a bit lengthy, but it gets really good at the end. View it here).

Hamas: Can you feel the love tonight?

From the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI):



Are those strains of Kumbaya I hear in the background?

Gaza: No moral equivalence here

I've heard some wacky ideas in my day. The socio-political regurgitant that gets my goat is tolerance. Explain to me why we should "tolerate" a political ideal that encourages folks to strap TNT to their torso and then toddle off to obliterate a school bus. Or a vegetable market. Or a movie theater (though I can see where most of Hollywood's fare of late might cause you to want to raze the theater).

Such ideas and political movements need to be condemned en masse by civilized nation's around the world. We can expect such ideologies to attract Iran, North Korea, Venezuela (new to the group), and on occasion Russia, China and their ilk.

But when the free world begins to cave to and condone such nonsense, even going so far as to adopting surreal and insane legal codes in parallel with their own, civilization itself is jeopardized. They skylark about like life's a t-ball game. "We're all winners!" cries Stuart Smalley. "Don't you feel just swell about yourself?" Folks just don't understand the reality that the kids are keeping score.

In America Alone, Mark Steyn relates the story of British General Sir Charles Napier (back when Great Britain still had some cajones). When confronted by the Indian practice of "suttee" where a woman would be burned upon the funeral pyre of her deceased husband, he didn't bat a British eyelash.

"You say that it is your custom to burn widows," he acknowledged. "Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre, beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And we will then follow ours."

India no longer practices suttee.

Israel & Hamas are not equivalent. We don't need to equivocate about our support for the only nation in that gnarly nook of the planet that enjoys any semblence of societal freedom and civilization. I came across a couple of political cartoons this season that depict the difference and the world's um-well-gosh opinion of the situation.

by Glen McCoy

by Michael Ramirez