The Muslim Menace

Haven't gotten to write on Muslim Menace articles in a while, but here comes reliable old Cal Thomas with a particularly illogical one.

If you are an enemy of America seeking her destruction, you would add to your pursuit of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons the undermining of this nation from within. You would do this largely through deception, putting on a peaceful face while subtly plotting ways to bring America down.

That tactic was on display last Friday in Washington as a crowd estimated at 3,000 Muslims gathered to pray. The organizer of the rally, Imam Abdul Malik of Brooklyn, N.Y., told Americans what we like to hear: "What we've done today, you couldn't do in any Muslim country. If you prayed on the palace lawn there, they'd lock you up."

As reported by The Washington Times Sadara Shaw, a resident of Washington, D.C., was quoted as saying "It's a show of solidarity to show all Muslims are not terrorists but law-abiding citizens." That is probably true, but irrelevant since it takes only a small number of terrorists to cause havoc.

So dumbass Cal Thomas believes that Muslims are putting on a peaceful face while subtly plotting, but at the same time he believes that most of them are law-abiding citizens. Odd. I guess his theory is that since plotting isn't technically against the law, they can be law-abiding plotters?

The article is a pure Muslim Menace one.

Try a little experiment, Google "Islam near" and then type in the name of any city or town. When I tried the small town of Bryn Mawr, Pa., 10 Islamic-related sites came up. In larger cities, there are as many, or more.

Oh my gosh. There are Islamic people right here in my home town. They must be subtly plotting to bring America down. Let's get them!

Unless of course they are law-abiding citizens. Should we be beating up law abiding Muslims? I don't know. I'm so confused.

Case in Point

Michelle Malkin's latest article is entitled "The Three R's in the Age of Obama: Rappin', Revolution and Radicalism."

This is pretty much exactly what Liberals are talking about when it comes to a racist component to the criticism of Obama. Whether or not Malkin is racist, she surely knows that criticizing Obama in these terms will play with her audience.

The overall article is about the Burlington Township school which apparently went a bit overboard in their praise of Obama and thus justifies all of the crazy hysteria Conservatives kicked up around Obama's speech to the schools a few weeks ago. She continues by giving biased biographies of a few of his education picks and concludes, in a time honored tradition, by lamenting that our students aren't learning Reading Writing and Arithmetic. Instead they are learning Rappin', Revolution, and Radicalism.

The Origin of Species

Got this from an article over at Salon - apparently Kirk Cameron is going to be giving away thousands of copies of the Origin of Species with a special introduction explaining how evil the book is. But this lady explains it better than I could.



So yeah. Actually the Dawkins Bible is such an obvious idea, I'd be surprised if it didn't appear at some point.

News from the Past - September 23, 1929

This is from the Hope Star for Monday Sept. 23, 1929 - it has a headline WORLDS LARGEST MELON IN, which seems truncated, but that's not the story I picked.

Bike Tourist Is
Visitor To Hope
Buenos Aires To New
York Is Jaunt Young
Argentinian Making
Victor Seghetti, of Buenos Aires, Argentine Republic, was a caller at this office Saturday afternoon, securing a letter showing he had visited here and the date.
Seghetti is making somewhat of a tour on a bicycle, headed from his native city to New York, visiting a newspaper office in every town he passes through and mailing the letters announcing his arrival on to New York to await his arrival.
Since starting his long journey Seghetti has passed through ten countries and is well on his way through the Estados Unidos. He expects to arrive in New York about Thanksgiving.

That's some serious biking.

Ben Shapiro Grows up and gets less interesting

Ben Shapiro has, it seems to me, always wanted to be a thinking man's columnist. He's more interested in being Robert Novak or George will than being Doug Giles or Ann Coulter. That hasn't prevented him from saying some shocking things from time to time (in most cases shockingly stupid), but most of those were seeming aberrations, not a deliberate style. In contrast, Coulter is aiming directly for the most controversial and hateful things she can say.

The upshot to all this is that in the long run Shapiro is trying to be dull. And as he's grown up he's gotten better at being dull. Which is why I don't write him about him nearly as much as I used to. His latest article compares President Obama to President Jimmy Carter, somewhat ineptly, but also dully.

Shapiro points out that both Carter and Obama hate Israel, which in this context means they disagree with the Israeli right wing. Many Israelis disagree with the Israeli right wing, and one wonders if they also hate Israel.

Then there's this bit.

Carter surrendered Afghanistan to the Soviets; Obama is on the verge of surrendering Afghanistan to the Taliban.

Not exactly. Obama remains committed to Afghanistan despite many in his party and on the left believing it's time to pull out.

The article continues in this vein noting that both Obama and Carter caused inflation (not really), both tried to mess with the economy (sort of true, but not a negative), and both came from racist backgrounds (yeah, that one is pretty convincing if you think Obama hates white people).

News from the Past - September 22, 1929

From the Morning Call out of Laurel Miss, we get this charming fight news.

$18,000 and
Manager of
Fight Gone
NEW ORLEANS, La., Sept. 21.—Frankie Edwards, who last night promoted the Tony Canzoneri-Eddie "Kid" Wolfe fight which drew $21,526.43 was sought tonight by district attorney's office, charged with embezzling $18,000.
Canzoneri got his money but Wolfe, and the referees, were not paid. Sammy Goldman, Canzoneri's manager, got most of Tony's share before he entered the ring and lost the least.

Call my crazy, but I'm going to guess it was Edwards what took the money.

Everybody's favorite subject

John Hawkin's latest article is about how Electing Barack Obama is bad for race relations. It's not very good. He starts off with the unprovable assertion that the main reason Black people voted for Barack Obama was race, showing that they really do judge a candidate on the basis of skin color, not character (yes, Hawkins quotes Conservatives favorite quote from Martin Luther King.

Hawkins then notes that after the election White America has concluded that racism is over, while Barack Obama's supporters have upped the usage of the race card.

So, despite the fact that Obama came to power promising unity, what we've gotten instead is incessant cries of racism over everything. Any effective attacks on Obama? Racism. Any opposition to his agenda? Racism. Any opposition at all to Obama? Racism.

Posters portraying Obama as a witch doctor might actually be racist though, Mr. Hawkins. Let's be honest for a moment - the Tea Partiers have held up some pretty racist posters, and if you read the comments of some on the right, it's clear that race does play into their disdain for Obama.

Hawkins then notes that Obama hasn't stood up to those in his own party.

However, it's also worth noting what Obama DOESN'T DO. He doesn't ask his supporters to stop crying "racism." So, everyone who opposes him politically gets smeared as a racist, while he doesn't have to personally get his hands dirty.

Yeah I remember back when Conservatoids were calling every criticism of the War in Iraq treasonous - President Bush sure stepped up and put a stop to that.

He then concludes that the Obama is no Jackie Robinson; rather the first Black President is a disgrace, in his opinion, and so will set race relations back. Presumably because White Americans will come to hate him more and more for his feckless incompetence while Black Americans will stand by him. Of course, it goes without saying that for Hawkins, Black America just has it wrong; Obama is a disaster and if they can't see it they must be blind. That may not be the truth.

Values Voters vs. Rude Reporters

For those of you who haven't seen this - at the Values Voters Summit this weekend, both MSNBC and FOX were heckled for rudely broadcasting from the floor of the summit (after being invited). Talking Points Memo has the story.

I find interesting the tag at the end of the FOX heckling - "we want to get the word out; a lot of people are interested in this values voters summit." The phrase we want to get the word out is suggestive to me.

Should ACORN sue FOX?

Ken Blackwell thinks they shouldn't, because it would make them look bad. Or that's the argument of his latest article.

If ACORN sues, it would have to sue alleging some variation of defamation or fraud. The problem is that for either allegation, truth is an absolute defense. Nothing could be more relevant to Fox establishing its defense of truth in the lawsuit than having access to ACORN’s office memos, emails, phone records, and bank statements. All of these would have a reasonable chance of providing evidence as to whether ACORN workers had knowledge of any of the topics seen on the videotapes.

I'm not a judge or a lawyer but wouldn't FOX have to convince a judge that there was a general policy of helping pimps set up underage brothels to go after all the records of ACORN?

So ACORN’s legal actions would be its undoing. The resulting exposure would explode into a national story that even sympathetic media outlets could no longer ignore, bedeviling ACORN’s allies at SEIU and even dragging top advisers to President Barack Obama into humiliating legal proceedings.

Methinks the conservative pundit doth protest too much. It is entirely possible that a ACORN/FOX legal struggle could be very bad for both organizations, because some very simple questions would have to be settled. How many times did the pimp and his ho (Doug Giles's daughter, it turns out) try this scheme and fail? ACORN says they did several times; FOX and the Pimp and Ho says they hit paydirt everytime they tried it. What is shown on the unedited videos? Surely they aren't going to want to show that. So it seems both organizations have something to lose.

Correcting Racial Misconceptions

Cal Thomas's latest article is a pretty poor reflection on Race in America in the age of Obama.

As the president's approval ratings fall and rise and fall again, some of his supporters in journalism and politics are returning to days of old when the label "racist" could end any discussion and force the accused either into stunned silence, or groveling repentance. I suspect the tactic won't work this time because Obama supporters will have difficulty explaining how a mostly white country could elect a black man president last November and ten months later become a racist majority.

Sad. Nobody thinks that America is a majority racist country all of a sudden. Some would argue that Conservatism is a majority racist movement, but I'm not even going that far. All I will say is that it's clear that a lot of the most impassioned attacks on Obama are, at least in part, racially motivated. And that these racially motivated people are having an effect on the electorate as a whole; they keep their racism largely under wraps.

According to liberal doctrine, black people can never be racist because they are members of a victim class created by white liberals as a kind of modern plantation to keep blacks voting for liberal Democrats.

This a bastardization of the real argument. Black people have much less power than white people in our society. White Racism keeps black people in Ghettos; Black Racism is mildly annoying for White People. Liberals and Democrats want a society in which Blacks participate equally without being disparaged or attacked because of their race; Conservatives and Republicans want us all to shut up about race.

Not all or even most Conservatives are Racist in my opinion; but most virulent Racists are Conservative.

A Christian Nation?

Nathan Tabor is uncomfortable with President Obama stating that this isn't just a Christian Nation. To be fair many Conservatives aren't. But in his latest article he takes it a step further.

He did away with the annual National Day of Prayer on which the White House traditionally hosted a service in its East Room. When a reporter asked Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs about Obama's decision, Gibbs replied, "Prayer is something that the president does everyday."

Lets pause here to note some minor dishonesty. Tabor makes it sound like this is something totally new; while President Bush 43 did hold a ceremony every year, President Clinton didn't hold any and President's Reagen and Bush 41 held one ceremony apiece during their tenures.

However, in the midst of a war against radical Islam and his push to takeover health care, President Obama found time to hold a White House dinner honoring the Muslim holiday of Ramadan Kareem. And the guest list did not only include Muslims. Many Washington elites attended the ceremony including some Republicans such as Senator Richard Lugar.

This is a bit like complaining about the President noting any non-Christian holiday, except that, of course, we are apparently at war with Islam. No wait, "Radical Islam." I'll note parenthetically that of course a white house dinner isn't just for Muslims, because presumably the President will attend and he isn't a Muslim.

News From the Past: September 15, 1929

This story is from the Sandusky Register, of Sandusky, Ohio.

Five Sing,
And Saw
Way Out
Deputies and Police seek Es-
caped prisoners Near
Steubenville
STEUBENVILLE, O., Sept 14 (AP) - Police and deputy sheriffs were searching the city and surrounding countryside tonight for five prisioners who sang and sawed their way out of the Jefferson-co jail early today.
Sheriff William Yost was disturbed early today by the sound of song pouring forth from one of the cell blocks. Loud and long the song continued and then it stopped suddenly. Sheriff Yost went to investigate and found that five of his prisoners had sawed their way to freedom to the accompaniment of their songs, which drowned out the noise of their saws.
The prisoners at liberty are James Rice, Pittsburgh, charged with highway robbery; Charles Grimm, Steubenville, charged with chicken stealing; Issac Henrickson, Louise, W. Va., charged with a statutory offense; William Afeaner, Columbus, charged with auto theft, and Fred Yates, Chicago, charged with non support.
The five men sawed the bars of their individual cells, then cut the bars on the tier. They slid down a water pipe to the basement where they cut the bars on a window and escaped.

It sounds like a missing scene from "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" I just love all the goofy details - particularly the crimes these gentlemen were charged with and the fact that they made their way to the basement and then sawed their way out of there; kind of implies that the sheriff wasn't exactly quick on the draw when the singing stopped.

Your Weekly Rush - Community Service leads to Fascism

I meant to get to this over the weekend but was too busy doing other things. This is from Limbaugh's Friday show in which he lambasted Obama (big surprise) for his remarks on September 11th.

The problem here, folks, is that 9/11, eight years ago today, we're not remembering it for what it should be remembered for. Obama's hijacking this to push his agenda. He's hijacking this event that he knows is going to get full-fledged media coverage all day long. He's hijacking this for what sounds like a wonderful thing. "Well, community service. We all gotta get together." You gotta understand "community service" is nothing more than community organizing. It is a tactic. Community service is one of the baby steps toward fascism.

So many things that Obama does appear to be isolated, but they are interconnected to organizing the private sector to serve the state -- and that's not the way this country was founded. You have to remember this about Barack Obama. He does not like this country as constituted. He does not like the US Constitution.

Yep. So whatever you do, don't serve your community!

Limbaugh did later back off of this, but it's still pretty revealing.

Strawman

Dennis Prager's latest article takes on the Moral Basis of Taxation. It starts promisingly, acknowledging that Liberal support for higher taxes has its basis in morality, and defending that position. But it falls down nearly immediately by stating that moral principle is simple unfairness.

Left-wing spokesmen, such as New York Times economics columnist and Princeton University professor of economics Paul Krugman, may offer economic arguments for raising taxes in order to lower government deficits, but their real motivations are moral: reducing economic inequality (by redistributing income) and expanding government (because government is the most effective way to help all citizens).

Very simplistic, but then Prager doesn't even really deal with those issues. Instead he offers up five or six problems with the concept of an income tax (presumably he is a fair tax proponent). He is opposed to progressive taxation and doesn't think people who don't pay income tax should get an equal vote (carefully excluding Payroll Taxes and Sales Taxes which almost everybody pays).

My moral argument in favor of an adequate level of taxation is this; it's immoral to let the government fail and it is immoral to shove off onto our children the burden of our own government. If you think the Government should do less, fair enough, lets have that talk. But lets not just throw everything on the nation's Credit Card and hope for the best.

Tort Reform

It's nice, every so often, to point to an article at Townhall and agree with it. In this case, Ken Conner takes on the long held belief that the best way to improve medicine in America is to stop holding Doctor's accountable for their errors.

Instead of focusing on truly conservative solutions to our nation's mounting health care crisis, Republican lawmakers and pundits are playing the same old song-and-dance—blaming ballooning health care costs on trial lawyers. This red herring tactic is a classic example of politicians trampling principle in pursuit of politics. In this case, Republicans moonlighting as "conservatives" seek to use tort reform to shield corporate malefactors (who also happen to be their financial benefactors) from full accountability for their wrongdoing. In so doing, they are undermining a bedrock principle of our nation's justice system.

The article is well worth reading for a thorough debunking of "tort reform."

News from the Past - September 13, 1929

I have not been good at updating this feature, but then I am not good at blogging on Sunday either, so why not take two things and put them together.

SEIZE BAY RUM
IN DIME STORE
Des Moines Jury Pronounces It
Palatable and Intoxicating.
Des Moines, la., Sept. 13.— (AP) — Bay rum from the 5 and 10 cent store has been classified by a Des Moines jury as a palatable and intoxicating beverage and therefore against the laws of the corn state.
Three thousand bottles of bay rum were seized in a raid at an F. W. Woolworth company 5-and-10 cent store. Condemnation proceedings were brought. After three days of testimony devoted to showing that bay rum was both palatable and intoxicating, the jury voted last night that the liquid be condemned.
Judge J. E. Mershon said that today he would issue the condemnation warrant. Attorney Will Riley, defense counsel, declared that he will appeal the case for final decision before the Iowa supreme court.
The verdict will lead to an extensive campaign by the county attorney to curb the sale of bay rum, it was announced.

I love those old timey captions that read like orders from the newspaper.

I also imagine this would have been a fun jury to have sat on.

Acorn Prostitution Story

Doug Giles has the story (along with Beck, Limbaugh and others).

In an espionage adventure that James Bond and Simon Templar would be proud of, two young filmmakers posed as civilians wanting to run a house of prostitution and infiltrated ACORN with video cameras rolling and found the nutty ACORN employees absolutely giddy about helping the characters with the following:

- How to start up their dream whorehouse with 13-year-old girls imported from El Salvador

The footage is available online should you want to see it.

The story stinks to high heaven. The two filmmakers did go around to a variety of Acorn offices trying to get this scam off the ground. The two woman involved were fired; I suspect they may have been provocateurs in on the gag. I don't know if this story has legs or not; I hope it doesn't.

Poor Rep. Joe Wilson

For those who don't know, poor Rep. Joe Wilson interrupted Obama's speech last night.

In an angry and very audible outburst, Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, interrupted President Obama’s speech Wednesday night with a shout of “You lie!”

His eruption — in response to Mr. Obama’s statement that Democratic health proposals would not cover illegal immigrants — stunned members of both parties in the House chamber.

He's sent a formal apology and presumably Obama will accept it. But it does kind of lend to the narrative that Republicans aren't really interested in improving healthcare, but are focused on keeping the status quo.

The best part will be when Rush Limbaugh lionizes Wilson later on today, as a hero for standing up to Obama.

Trivializing Serious Issues

Cal Thomas's latest article is about Israel, in which he presents Obama as, at best, another Chamberlain eager to sell out the Jews. And yet that's not the bad part.

What could the Jews have done seven decades ago to dissuade Hitler from his "Final Solution"? What can modern Israelis do today to keep from being murdered by those who continue to hate Jews simply for being Jews? The answer to both questions is: nothing. Jews were murdered then and now, not for anything they did, but simply for being Jewish.

Thank you Mr. Thomas for trivializing a serious issue with blatant and obvious misstatement, if not outright lie. The truth, as anybody with half a brain knows, is that the Palestinian issue is a real issue; Israeli treatment of the Palestinians has been, at best, mixed. And when you completely exonerate Israel, and chalk up the tension strictly to irrational, Hitler-like hatred, you make it harder to actually solve this problem. And that's pretty damned shameful, in my opinion.

Lessons from History

John Hawkins latest article covers lessons we can learn from the rise of Hitler. Unlike Pat Buchanan, Hawkins seems to see Hitler as a bad person and something to be wary of. That said it's not hard to read his article as a suggestion that President Obama might be another Hitler, and, ironically enough, another Chamberlain. Take this section.

Take even non-reasonable claims seriously: Margaret Thatcher once said,

"It is one of the great weaknesses of reasonable men and women that they imagine that projects which fly in the face of commonsense are not serious or being seriously undertaken."

And of course conservatives are pretty convinced that Obama has repeatedly said that he wants socialism or communism or fascism. So I guess we should take those claims seriously?

And then of course Hawkins gives Chamberlain the same kicking he always gets.

So, when a belligerent nation or group benefits from its belligerence, it should surprise no one when it continues to be belligerent. That principle applied to Hitler and it most certainly still applies today.

Of course original appeasement involved actually giving Hitler what he wanted. Modern appeasement just implies not starting a war to invade another country.

Now in fairness to Hawkins he does have a paragraph about how everybody's not another Hitler, which would seem to protect him from the suggestion that he's arguing that Obama is another Hitler. Pity his examples come from the townhall disrupters.