Don Singleton: 2006-09-24

Saturday, September 30, 2006

Pig's head dumped outside mosque at start of Ramadan

Yahoo! News reported Police have revealed they were investigating the dumping of a pig's head outside a mosque on the first full day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Someone is trying to stir up trouble

The head was found outside the Jamia Mosque in Newport, southeast Wales, on Saturday. The Koran strictly forbids Muslims to eat pork.

No problem. The Muslims are fasting during Ramadan anyway.

"We treat all incidents of hate crime seriously and are pursuing a number of lines of inquiry to identify the offender," said Gwent Police Superintendent Simon Prince on Friday.

If you find the offender don't tell the Muslims, or his head may be found outside of a church.

Teacher in Hiding After Attack on Islam Stirs Threats

NYT A French high school philosophy teacher and author who carried out a scathing attack against the Prophet Muhammad and Islam in a newspaper commentary says he has gone into hiding under police protection after receiving a series of death threats, including one disseminated on an online radical Islamist forum.

This is ridiculous. We have to put up with NBC editing God out of Veggie Tales and Madonna pretending to be crucified just for the publicity, and no one gives a thought to whether Christians will be offended, and yet Muslims feel no one can say anything wrong against their faith.

The teacher, Robert Redeker, 52, wrote in the center-right daily Le Figaro 10 days ago that Muhammad was “a merciless warlord, a looter, a mass-murderer of Jews and a polygamist,” and called the Koran “a book of incredible violence.”

You left out pedophile.

The Redeker case is the latest manifestation in Europe of a mounting ideological battle that pits those who believe Islam and the Prophet Muhammad can be criticized in the name of free speech against those in the Muslim community who believe no criticism can be tolerated.

97 Reasons Democrats Are Weak On Defense

Investor's Business Daily reports 97 Reasons Democrats Are Weak On Defense And Can't Be Trusted To Govern In Wartime

I did not realize there were 97 reasons, but I certainly agree with IBD.

Rep. Foley Quits In Page Scandal

WaPo reported Six-term Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) resigned yesterday amid reports that he had sent sexually explicit Internet messages to at least one underage male former page.

Finally Republicans and Democrats have something they can agree on, what Foley did was very bad. I am surprised the Dems are as upset as they are, because it did involve sex, and there is not that much difference between Pages and Interns, but they hate Republicans enough to agree with them that what Foley did was very wrong.

I've got the keys

I am so flattered that Don gave me the keys to his fabulous blog. I am nowhere even close to his writing style or the political pundit he is, so I might just stir things up a bit. Honestly, I am here to keep up his blog if he isn't up to par some days. This responsibility is overwhelming, but he is a friend and I will do what friends do! Hooah!!!

Friday, September 29, 2006

Sheikh: All must convert to Islam

Ynetnews reported Sheikh Abu Saqer, leader of Gaza's Jihadia Salafiya Islamic outreach movement, which seeks to make secular Muslims more religious, called the pope a "puppet" for "that Crusader George Bush."

If he is a puttpe, someone cut his strings.

The Gaza imam said the only Christian-Muslim dialogue that is acceptable is one in which "all religions agree to convert to Islam."

That is not dialog, it is capitulation

"The call for so-called dialogue by this little racist pope is a Trojan horse with the main goal of reaching a new system in which the ideals (of Christianity) are a new ideology that will rule relations between nations and people.

He must feel that the arguments in favor of Islam are so weak that if compared to other faiths, Islam would loose.

The dialogue he wants is dangerous," said Abu Saqer, speaking to WND from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

Video interview with Lieberman

Pajamas Media has a video blog entry where Senator Joseph Lieberman sat down with PajamasMedia CEO Roger L. Simon in Washington, DC to talk about the political atmosphere of America, Lieberman’s quest for re-election, and what it is likely to be the front-running political hybrid in the 2006 race.

God edited out of Veggie Tales

Michelle Malkin devotes today's Hot Air video to the fact that NBC insisted that God be edited out of Veggie Tales. I hope that some Christian groups will make note of the companies sponsoring these cartoon broadcasts, and will contact them and indicate they are considering a boycott of their products unless Veggie Tales reverts back to its normal religious message.

Many Rights in U.S. Legal System Absent in New Bill

R. Jeffrey Smith wrote in WaPo The military trials bill approved by Congress lends legislative support for the first time to broad rules for the detention, interrogation, prosecution and trials of terrorism suspects far different from those in the familiar American criminal justice system.

Wonderful. When are the Democrats going to learn that this is a war, not a court of law. We are fighting people who are willing to blow themselves up to kill a few people, or fly airplanes into buildings to kill many more, and who will chop people heads off just to get on television.

The rules of engagement when a swat team surround a suspect in the United States are not the same as the rules of engagement when the military surround a terrorist in Iraq or Afganistan, and the terrorists is not entitled to be read the Miranda warning.

God help this country if the brain damaged Democrats ever get back in control.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

The Greatest Figures In American History

Right Wing News asked more than 225 right of center bloggers for a list of their picks for the Greatest 25 Figures in American History. 41 blogs responded, including mine, and here are the results. My picks are in bold.

Ronald Reagan (39)
Abraham Lincoln (37)
George Washington (35)
Ben Franklin (32)
Martin Luther King Jr. (30)
Thomas Jefferson (29)
James Madison (22)
Thomas Edison (21)
John Adams (17)
Henry Ford (16)
Alexander Hamilton (15)
Franklin D. Roosevelt (14)
Teddy Roosevelt (14)
Ulysses S. Grant (14)
Albert Einstein (13)
George Patton (13)
Dwight D. Eisenhower (12)
Bill Gates (10)
Harry Truman (10)
Mark Twain (10)
Wright Brothers (10)
George W. Bush (9)
Frederick Douglass (8)
Thomas Paine (8)
Alexander Graham Bell (7)

Honorable Mentions: John F. Kennedy (4), Lewis And Clark (4), William Tecumseh Sherman (5), Jonas Salk (5), John Marshall (5), Milton Friedman (5), George Washington Carver (5), Susan B. Anthony (5), Audie Murphy (6), Douglas MacArthur (6). Patrick Henry (6), Andrew Carnegie (6)

People I included, that did not make the list, are Condi Rice, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Bob Hope, Laura Bush, Sam Walton, and Mel Gibson (for the Passion of the Christ, certainly not for his latest escapades).

In Tribal Pakistan, an Uneasy Quiet

WaPoI reported Three weeks after Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, announced a peace pact with Taliban radicals in a tribal area bordering Afghanistan, recent visitors say there is now pin-drop silence in a territory that once shook with artillery and bomb blasts.

And what is wrong with that?

Religious patrols are enforcing law and order, they say, in place of Pakistan army troops who have withdrawn to their barracks. But as the toll from violence rises across the border in Afghanistan, with suicide bombings killing 22 people in three cities this week, there are reports that militant Pakistani tribal leaders, while complying with their pledge to reduce the presence of foreign Islamic fighters, intend to defy the peace pact by sending local fighters and suicide bombers into Afghanistan.

That is ok. Just keep the door closed, and we will deal with them in Afganistan. Just don't let them sneak back over the border to find sanctuary.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Now history is off limits lest we offend Islamicists

James Lileks wrote in Austin American Statesmen Clip and save, for this may come in handy: If you mock Islam with a drawing or a novel, you get riots and dead people. News of mishandled holy books yields riots and dead people. Insufficiently reverent short films by a Dutchman yields a dead person, specifically the Dutchman. Now we add this detail: Quoting medieval religious colloquies is a reasonable justification for burning churches, shooting a nun and holding up signs demanding that the pope convert to Islam or saw off his own head. (There have been reports of carpal tunnel syndrome among radical Islam's enforcers, and they have requested we all help out.) This is a new twist: Now history itself cannot be discussed. Since it's difficult to predict what else will enflame the devout, Islam has to be treated with unusual deference, like a 3-year-old child with anger management problems.

A 3 year old child with an automatic weapon.

But it's not what we say that truly offends. It's what we are. The West's lack of interest in joining the Ummah is an affront in itself,

I suspect Hitler was equally insulted that we did not all want to be subservient to the Third Reich.

and we broadcast our sins in High Infidelity. If you believed that the West's apostasy was an affront to God, you'd spend your leisure hours torching straw popes, too.... The Christianists, as some clever equivocators call them, are an impediment to Utopia as great as the terrorists. No less a philosopher than Rosie O'Donnell said so on "The View" recently, proclaiming Christian fundamentalists and Islamicists equal threats to America. They're both judgmental — boo, hiss! — and that makes them equal. O'Donnell had a point, one supposes. Using the legislative process to pass faith-based initiatives, driving jets into skyscrapers: madness, everywhere.

Yes, let us compare. The faith based initiative would have allowed churches to be on an equal footing with secular organizations to get contracts to help the poor. Compare that to flying airplanes into buildings and killing thousands. Yes, in the warped mind of a liberal I guess both are equally bad.

At the risk of making a generalization: The secular right seems more tolerant of Christianity, and skeptical toward large swaths of Islam. The secular left often seems annoyed and contemptuous towards American religion — unless the pastor on the dais insists Jesus would have been a board member of Planned Parenthood — and oddly protective of Islam. Not because they believe in it; heavens, no. Some progressives are simply besotted by any civilization not their own.

ROF, LMAO

Others have no vocabulary to oppose its more radical manifestations, because, well, we cannot judge other cultures. (Unless they're in the American South.) Others are less concerned by Islamicists because they have greater dislike for the people who oppose radical Islam, who are probably bigots. (Boo, hiss!) When those theo-neos get tough on radical Islam, it's just a convenient mask for their dislike of the Scary Non-Christian Dusky Hordes. Besides, what about the Crusades and the Inquisition? Huh? OK, then.

Thus the most enlightened and well-intentioned beneficiaries of the human civilization excuse or wish away the words of their most implacable opponents. It'll take something drastic to change their minds. A dirty bomb? Maybe. A demonstration in Pakistan in favor of Wal-Mart? That would certainly reorder some opinions.

In the meantime, we will learn to say less and less about more and more. As the grim cliche has it: If you say Islam isn't always a religion of peace, the Islamicists will kill you. This doesn't make them hypocrites, of course. The grave is a very peaceful place.

You've got a point there.

Opera Canceled Over a Depiction of Muhammad

NYT A leading German opera house has canceled performances of a Mozart opera because of security fears stirred by a scene that depicts the severed head of the Prophet Muhammad, prompting a storm of protest here about what many see as the surrender of artistic freedom.

What the NYT waits until the seventh paragraph to admit is that the Opera involves the severed heads of Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha and Poseidon. The opera was written by Mozart in 1780, and it was on TV in 1983, and no one was worried about threats by Christians or Buddhists (or anyone still worshiping Poseidon), but nutcase Muslims were not so sensitive of criticism of their Prophet that they did not threaten violence then. A true Muslim would know that such a secular presentation did not really wound his faith, just as a true Christian knows that Christ is still Christ, irrespective of what some secular artist depicts. This does not mean I am happy about this Opera, any more than I have been happy with some of the other insulting artwork that has been created over the past years. I just know that Chist is above all of it. After all, He died on the cross, in a very painful method, that I might have Eternal Life. Secularists may try to demean Him, but they will not be joining me in meeting Christ in Heaven. And the nutcases that have hijacked the Muslim faith will not be there either, although I am sure many true Muslims will be.

The Deutsche Oper Berlin said Tuesday that it had pulled “Idomeneo” from its fall schedule after the police warned of an “incalculable risk” to the performers and the audience.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Stricter Voting Laws

NYT reported Eva Charlene Steele, a recent transplant from Missouri, has no driver’s license or other form of state identification. So after voting all her adult life, Mrs. Steele will not be voting in November because of an Arizona law that requires proof of citizenship to register.

Does she not have a birth certificate? Or can she not get one?

“I have mixed emotions,” said Mrs. Steele, 57, who uses a wheelchair and lives in a small room in an assisted-living center. “I could see where you would want to keep people who don’t belong in the country from voting, but there has to be an easier way.”

Does Arizona not give you a way to get a photo id showing you have proved you are a resident, without it giving the right to drive a car?

Russell K. Pearce, a leading proponent of the new requirement, offers no apologies. “You have to show ID for almost everything — to rent a Blockbuster movie!”

Or cash a check, or any of a number of other reasons. All should have photo ids. I wish social security cards had photo ids.

said Mr. Pearce, a Republican in the State House of Representatives. “Nobody has the right to cancel my vote by voting illegally. This is about political corruption.”

Mrs. Steele and Mr. Pearce are two players in a spreading partisan brawl over new and proposed voting requirements around the country. Republicans say the laws are needed to combat fraud, especially among illegal immigrants. Democrats say there is minimal fraud, if any,

What they mean is that most voter fraud is on the Democrat side, so they are not hurt by it.

and accuse Republicans of suppressing the votes of those least likely to have the required documentation — minorities, the poor and the elderly — who tend to vote for Democrats.

Help them get the necessary IDs, and then they can cash checks, etc, in addition to voting.

John Bolton Confirmation Battle Really, Really Dead

Washington Note reported The last pre-election loophole through which John Bolton's confirmation might have snuck through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was at 2:15 this afternoon at a previously called "business meeting" of the Committee. That meeting has been cancelled -- and with it even the dimmest chance of John Bolton being confirmed as US Ambassador to the United Nations. Some have said that another effort could be mounted during a lame duck session of Congress, but there are several Republicans who will not feel bound by the White House in that circumstance; Dems as well -- who will vote against cloture on the floor of the Senate were it to get out of Committee then.

That depends on what Bolton does between now and then. The politicians might not fear immediate recall by the voters, but if the voters make it clear they like what he is doing, the politicians would be running a risk to oppose him

So, it's over. Wow. John Bolton might agree to serve as the uncompensated Ambassador to the UN in a second recess appointment, or might agree to serve as a recess appointed political deputy at the UN and made "acting Ambassador and Chief of Mission" at a pay cut.

I wonder if a conservative think tank could hire him as a consultant and still let him serve as Ambassador.

Either way, Ambassador Bolton will fill his term as the only unconfirmed Ambassador at the United Nations in American history.

And yet the best one we have ever had.

Transition to Civilian Life

Greta Perry (Hooah Wife) relates what their family is going through as they transition to civilian life.

Monday, September 25, 2006

McCain Names Practices

WaPo reported A Republican senator who played a leading role in drafting new rules for U.S. interrogations of terrorism suspects said yesterday that he believes a compromise bill embraced by party leaders and the White House will bar some of the most extreme techniques said to have been used by the CIA.

McCain should be waterborded, sleep deprived, and put in a cold room until he reveals why he thinks he has a snowball's chance of getting the Republican nomination in 2008.

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) named three measures that he said would no longer be allowed under a provision barring techniques that cause serious mental or physical suffering by U.S. detainees: extreme sleep deprivation, forced hypothermia and "waterboarding," which simulates drowning. He also said other "extreme measures" would be banned.

I am sure the Jihadists will be happy to hear what they should and don't need to train their people to deal with.

McCain's remarks were unusual because public officials involved in the lengthy public debate about U.S. interrogation practices have rarely made specific references to the CIA's actions. Instead, they have made general claims about the need for rough interrogations or a desire to stop abusive behavior.

Senior militant 'killed in Iraq'

BBC News reported British forces have killed a senior al-Qaeda fugitive in a raid on a house in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, security sources say.

It is a good thing they did not have to tell him ahead of time about the raid, like is happening now in Londonistan

Officials named the dead man as Omar al-Farouq, a top lieutenant of Osama Bin Laden in south-east Asia.

Doughnut Hole

WaPo reported Millions of older Americans are confronting a temporary break in their Medicare drug coverage this month that will require them to pay the full cost of their prescriptions or face the painful prospect of going without.

Before part D was enacted, they would have been paying for all of them all along.

This is the "doughnut hole" in the new Medicare drug benefit that began in January, and advocates for seniors say there is nothing sweet about it. Some seniors knew nothing of the coverage gap until they were hit with a bigger drug bill, advocates say.

Then they were not paying attention. I knew about it from the start. I decided not to sign up for Part D because the premiums would be more than my drug costs, but I knew if I had, the doughnut hole was there.

"Virtually everyone who calls to say they've been denied coverage, they're shocked," said Robert M. Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Center, a nonprofit that helps seniors navigate Medicare. "Trying to explain that this is the way the program was created by Congress angers folks who think it makes no sense. Many people feel blindsided."

Would they have preferred paying for all of their drugs all year, or would they have preferred to pay more up front to avoid the doughnut hole?

The coverage gap was one of the most contentious elements of the 2003 legislation that created the new benefit. It ends federal payments for a person's drug purchases once an annual spending limit is reached, resuming them only after the beneficiary has spent thousands of dollars out of pocket.

Proponents saw the unusual setup as a way to provide some help to all beneficiaries, and substantial help to those with catastrophic drug costs, and yet not break the bank in a federal program that is expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.

Precisely. They could have paid more up front and avoided the doughnut hole, but that would have been more unfair to those that did not need that many prescriptions. I think doctors prescribe a lot more than people really need. With too many drugs you get serious drug interactions.

Nine months into the program, as more and more seniors reach the threshold that puts them in the gap, many see it as a headache -- or worse.

Frances Acanfora, 65, had been paying $58 for a three-month supply of her five medications. But this month the retired school lunchroom aide learned that her next bill would be $1,294. She had entered the doughnut hole.

Without the program, she would have been paying $1294 all along.

"It's not my fault that I take this medicine," the Brooklyn resident said. "I've got to take it. And they make a limit. That's not fair."

Who made a limit? They paid for a lot of your drugs, but not all of them? That is not a limit.

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Police to brief Muslims before terror raids

Times Online reported Police have agreed to consult a panel of Muslim leaders before mounting counter-terrorist raids or arrests. Members of the panel will offer their assessment of whether information police have on a suspect is too flimsy and will also consider the consequences on community relations of a raid.

They will also determine whether a raid would interfere with Jihad.

Members will be security vetted and will have to promise not to reveal any intelligence they are shown. They will not have to sign the Official Secrets Act.

So if they do decide to alert the Jihadists, they can't be prosecuted.

The first panel, expected to consist of four people, will be set up initially in London. Tomorrow representatives from police forces across England and Wales will decide whether to make the scheme national.

If you are going to do something this stupid, why not make it national.

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