Nigeria is a large, multi -religious country in West Africa that has historically had what could be described as 'a Muslim problem', in common with almost every other country with a large Muslim minority. The problem is especially bad in the majority Muslim Hausa North, which is under de facto sharia and has seen Christians killed and churches burned over things as trivial as the MoToons or a newspaper story on a beauty contest.
The problem with giving in to sharia and attempting to live with this level of intimidation is that eventually it increases and attempts to take over whatever portion of dar-harb (literally,'the house of war' the lands ruled by non-Muslims)is nearest and most vulnerable.
That's pretty much what happened in Nigeria.
A hard line Muslim group surfaced known as Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sin" in the local Hausa language. Observers have referred to them as a Nigerian Taliban.
They've been simmering for awhile as the local politicans tried to appease them and look the other way, but they finally erupted and attempted to take over the north and as much of the rest of Nigeria as they could grab for Dar Islam in an armed insurrection that was marked by attacks on police stations, churches, prisons and government buildings and terrorist attacks on non-Muslims.
The police commander of Borno state announced on state radio that Mohammed Yusuf, the leader of the sect some call the Nigerian Taliban, has "died in police custody."
He gave no further explanation, but the state governor's spokesman Usman Ciroma told The Associated Press: "I saw his body at police headquarters. I believe he was shot while he was trying to escape."
Yusuf's death could provoke more violence, though his followers in the Boko Haram sect may be in disarray after troops shelled his compound in the northern city of Maiduguri on Wednesday. Yusuf, 39, managed to escape with about 300 followers, some of them armed. His deputy, Bukar Shekau, was killed in the attack, according to Army commander Maj. Gen. Saleh Maina. (...)
The government warned people to evacuate the area before the attack on the compound Wednesday, then shelled the compound and stormed the group's mosque inside, setting off a raging firefight with retreating militants armed with homemade hunting rifles and firebombs, bows and arrows, machetes and scimitars.
An AP reporter saw soldiers shoot their way into the mosque under fire and then raked those inside with gunshots.The bodies of barefoot young men littered the streets of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, on Thursday morning as the army pursued the manhunt on the outskirts of the city. Police said most of the dead were fighters with Boko Haram. Army Col. Ben Anahotu said three police officers were killed.
President Umaru Yar'Adua said that security agents had been ordered to attack when the movement started gathering fighters from nearby states at its sprawling Maiduguri compound in preparation for "the holy war." {...}
Nigeria's 140 million people are roughly divided between Christians in the south and northern-based Muslims. Shariah was implemented in 12 northern states after Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999 following years of oppressive military regimes. More than 10,000 Nigerians have died in sectarian violence since then.
It's notable that the apologist goons at Human Rights Watch were quick to condemn the Nigerian military and call for the removal of the police commander who was in charge when the Islamist leader was killed in custody. The Nigerians told them to pound sand.
I particularly like the Nigerian military displaying the bodies in the street, as an example to others.
Like it or not, there's a lesson here.
Appeasement only increases the violence. Confronting it forcefully ends it. And once you decide to confront Islamism forcefully, you have to keep fighting until the Islamists are totally defeated and humiliated, and then take steps to make sure they never get in a position to attack you again. Because you've made it clear that the price is a lot higher than they're going to be willing to pay.
It's a lesson any country threatened by Islamist jihad needs to commit to memory, whether it's India, Russia,Israel, the Phillipines...or America.
I just loved this! After poking holes in Obamacare you could drive a semi through, Rudy Giuliani weighed on Obama's shooting his mouth off before knowing all the on the Gates arrest and Obama's remark that this was 'a teachable moment.'
Rudy's response? "He's actually right. It is teachable. Here's the lesson: Shut up."
Classic. And one reason he was my pick for the GOP nominee to go up against Obama after Duncan Hunter. Things would be very different right now if Rudy Giuliani was in the White House ..and he may just get there yet.
One of the amazing things about the blogosphere is its ability to ferret out that which the powerful would rather keep secret. Jim Treacher has an exclusive transcript from Obama's beer summit/photo-op with Joe Biden, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Sergeant Jum Crowly and President Obama, and it's not to be missed.
Michelle Malkin turns talking head Matt Lauer every which way but loose on his own show to the point where you could almost feel sorry for him...
Michelle hits out at the Obama's racial opportunism and the administration's cronyism without missing a beat. Watch it all, or you'll miss Lauer's whupped dog expression at the very end.
Our old friend Dan Rather is calling on the prevaricator-in-chief to rescue his shills in the dinosaur media from themselves. Think of it as widespread NPR,( or maybe Orwell's Ministry of Truth) only with different initials:
As if the relationship between the Obama Administration and the news media weren’t cozy enough already, former “CBS Evening News” anchor Dan Rather is calling on President Obama to “make recommendations” for the media on how to survive the economic downturn.
Rather spoke at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colo. on July 28 and addressed challenges to the news industry, which he described as challenges to the “very survival of American democracy,” and insisted the president should step in.
“I personally encourage the president to establish a White House commission on public media,” Rather said, according to the July 29 Aspen Daily News.
According to the story, Rather said “corporate and political influence” on newsrooms had damaged the industry and was cause for concern.
I think Rather is angling for the job of media czar with Obama.
While some of the names belong to people who might obviously be deserving and some are there for simple political bean counting, two names jumped out at me...Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights.
Like most of the rest of the ANC, the good Bishop was noted for his friendliness with Palestinians and Yasir Arafat (the Palestinians supplied the ANC with weaponry and terrorist training) and his frequent comparison of Israel with apartheid South Africa.
During the first UN Human Rights Commission meeting in Durban in 2001 (known as Durban I) Tutu led the charge on what became an anti-Semitic orgy inside and out that stank so badly that even the Americans and European delegations left.
Here's a few choice Tutuisms uttered at a conference in Boston back in 2002:
"Israel is like Hitler and apartheid."
"The Jewish lobby is very powerful..People are scared in this country [the U.S.], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful—very powerful."
She went on to become United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,where she was the architect of the infamous Durban Conference and oversaw its anti-Israel platform,while not saying or doing anything about the blatant anti-Semitic demonstrations and propaganda inside and outside the conference. She was instrumental in seeing to it that homicide bombing and terrorist attacks against Israel was not condemned as a violation of human rights.In fact, Robinson’s UN commission actually voted to condone homicide bombings as a legitimate means to establish Palestinian statehood.
She also was instrumental in pressing for UN investigation of the non-massacre in Jenin and in appointing known anti-Semite Bishop Tutu as head of the UNHRC's investigative commission.Which of course, never investigated anything but Israel.
After her stint as a UN Judeophobe, she went on to become a professor at Columbia, where she fit right in with anti-Semites like Obama's old friend Rashid Khalidi.
These awards are diligently screened, so as not to embarrass the president.Tutu and Robinson didn't just slip through by chance.
You can tell a lot about someone from seeing whom his heroes are and what kind of behavior he honors.
part of being president is sending messages. By honoring Tutu and Robinson, Obama is making an obvious gesture to Israel and the Jews. The one normally made using the middle finger.
UPDATE:Gabriel over at Ace's place reminds me about another of Obama's wonderful Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient,the Rev Joseph Lowery. You remember him....he was the cretin who made the following 'benediction' at the Inaugural:
Black will not be asked to get in back; When Brown can stick around; When Yellow will be mellow; When the Red Man can get ahead, man; And when White will embrace what is right.
He's also the same moron who attacked President Bush and the First Lady when they attended the Coretta Scott King funeral. UPDATE 2: As other people notice that Mary Robinson is slated to receive America's highest civilian award, there's been some criticism, and she's apparently not taking it well, whining about how 'certain members of the Jewish community are bullying me'. That would include AIPAC, the ADL, the Republican Jewish coalition, the ZOA, UN Watch, Claudia Rosett, Melanie Phillips ...the list is a pretty long one, and a lot of them aren't even Jewish.
Ed Lasky over at American Thinker speculates that this is probably the doing of another 'anti-Zonist' in Obama's employ, Samantha Powers.
It's a funny thing about 'anti-Zionists'. Dig a little and they almost invariably turn out to be Jew haters, and usually you don't have to dig very deep at all.
When it comes to Putin, Syria's Assad or Iran's Ahmadinejad,our Prevaricator-In-chief is docile as a lamb and downright obsequious..But when it comes to our allies, or to a small democratic nation that legally tossed out a wanna-be Hugo Chavez who tried to usurp power, Barack Hussein Obama is revealed as the neo-Marxist and enemy of freedom he truly is.
When one of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez's allies, Leftist Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, tried to unilaterally change the Honduran Constitution to allow him to become in effect president-for-life by putting through an illegal referendum, he was warned by the Honduran Supreme Court that this was a grave violation of their constitution and would not be permitted
When he persisted in attempting to do it anyway, they impeached him, legally appointed an interim government and then tossed Zelaya out of the country.
Subsequently, we've been treated to the unbelievable spectacle of the President of the United States lining up with Hugo Chavez and the Castros to protest this 'coup' and insist the Zelaya be put back into power.
Obama has ramped up the pressure on Honduras to restore Zelaya to power in a manner that almost unbelievable from one democratic government to another. He's already cut off large amounts of military and economic aid to a country that was one of our best allies in the region, demanding a deal to restore Zelaya to power "now."
I seem to recall a certain president flapping his gums about how the US isn't here to dictate to other nations about their internal affairs, about how arrogant we have been in the past.
I suppose that only applies if you're an Islamist or Leftist horror show of a country. If you're a democratic ally of the US like Israel or Honduras who's gotten on the wrong side of of enemies, our neo-marxist Dear Leader has no problem whatsoever with all the arrogance and and bullying he can muster up.
What you don't know while getting wasted can literally have you or your friends taking the dirt nap...
Think that you should just let a drunk friend sleep it off, that drinking keeps you warm, that drinking coffee sobers you up,or a couple of the other popular urban legends about getting blotto? Urrrk! Wrong! Cracked'sAdam Brown gives you the real skinny and tells you what you ought to be doing instead.
Aside from not sopping up booze like they're going to stop making it tomorrow, that is...
A must see- a thirty second vid that puts what's at stake in perspective.
Too bad they weren't able work in a reference to the obscene cost,or the fact that even Nancy Pelosi finally admitted that illegal aliens will be fully covered at our expense, but still excellent... NOW GET OFF YOUR DUFF AND CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSMEN! DO IT NOW!
Addressing 2,000 followers at Mosque Maryam, the Nation of Islam headquarters on the South Side, Farrakhan described Jackson as a "messianic voice" and an "archangel of sound, song and dance," as he called Jackson a victim of "Zionist leaders," the U.S. government and the media.
Ranting old buffoon.
It's amazing how many of President Obama's close long time associates seem to think this way when it comes to 'zionists'.
The Watcher's Council is a group of some of the most incisive blogs in the`sphere. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one of their own and one from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.
Does President Barack Hussein Obama fulfill the Constitutional requirement of being a natural-born US citizen?
As I've stated before,I personally think the people who are working this angle are wasting time and energy, since the Supreme court will absolutely not touch this with a ten foot pole - for fear of civil unrest, if nothing else.
But in spite of that, in view of the lunatic theories, the refusal to provide clear and conclusive information by Obama and the plain disinformation floating around the web on this matter both pro and con, I think Joshua's Army members deserve an unbiased look at this.
This controversy has been around since the election, and it hasn't gone away.As a matter of fact, speculation has increased to the point where the White House unleashed its attack poodle Robert Gibbs on the matter:
Question: "Is there anything you can say that will make the Birthers go away?"
Gibbs: "No. I mean, the God's-honest truth is 'no.' I mean, Bill, let's understand this. I almost hate to indulge in such an august setting as the White House--and I mean this in seriousness--the White House briefing room discussing the made-up, fictional nonsense of whether or not the President was born in this country.
"A year and a half ago, I asked that the birth certificate be put on the internet. because Lord knows, if you've got the birth certificate and put it on the internet, what else could be the story? Here's the deal again: if I had some DNA it wouldn't assuage those who don't believe he was born here.
"But I have news for them and for all of us. The President was born in Honolulu, Hawaii."
Gibson as usual is factually challenged or simply trying to lie and spin this. What exactly would DNA prove about where someone was born?? And by 'birth certificate', is he referring to the crudely forged photoshop of the short form certificate of Live Birth posted on Daily Kos? Because that's the only one that's ever been posted publicly to my knowledge, although Hawaiian public officials have publicly acknowledged the official short form Certificate of Live Birth's existence.
All that aside, the fact that the White House even saw fit to address this shows that this controversy continues to have legs - in large part because of the extraordinary amount of time, money and effort Obama and his camp have devoted to sealing his records, refusing to answer perfectly legitimate questions and thwarting any inquiries into the matter.
Let's look at the facts.
The US Constitution has only three requirements to serve as president. You have to be at least thirty-five years of age, you must be a natural-born US citizen, and you must have resided for the last fourteen years within the United States.
A natural born citizen is defined as someone born within the territorial limits of the United States or its possessions. Thus, John McCain is a natural born citizen because he was born to two US citizens in the Canal Zone, a US possession at the time. So is anyone born in Puerto Rico, or within a US embassy - American embassies in foreign countries are considered US soil, as are certain military installations.
With that in mind, here's what we know about the current president's situation. The president's mother, Stanley Anne Dunham was eighteen and already pregnant with Obama when she flew to Kenya to be with his father. We know that at least two of Obama's Kenyan relatives went public with the fact that they witnessed Obama's birth in Kenya, and that afterwards they withdrew very quickly from any media contact. We know that Obama's mother stayed in Kenya for several months, but decided she didn't like the way Kenyan Muslims treated their wives (and likely, the idea of having Obama's father's previous wife in the picture) and left...by which time she was very pregnant. It's also a fact that most airlines won't allow a women in that condition to board a plane, for obvious reasons.
So what if Obama was born in Kenya or outside the US? His mother was a natural born citizen. Doesn't that make him a US citizen anyway?
Sorry, no. Obama's mother was not of legal age to transfer citizenship to her child if he was born outside the US according to the laws in existence at that time. I refer you to Section 301(a)(7) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of June 27, 1952, 66 Stat. 163, 235, 8 U.S.C. §1401(b), Matter of S-F- and G-, 2 I & N Dec. 182.
Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham was 18 when he was born. In order to transfer US citizenship to a child born outside the US, she would have had to have lived in the US 10 years consecutively, five of which were after reaching the age of 14. Since she was not nineteen at the time of Obama's birth, she could not have legally transferred citizenship to Obama if he was born overseas.
There's also the matter of Obama's father, who was a Kenyan national and a British subject. Under the laws and international conventions of that time, there's a good possibility Obama would have been a British subject at birth even if he actually was born in Hawaii, because of the mother's inability to transfer citizenship and his father's nationality.
The Obama-Dunham marriage dissolved in some acrimony. Since Obama's father was Kenyan and a Muslim, there was every reason for the Dunhams to believe at the time that Obama's father might attempt to initiate a messy court battle to regain custody of his male child Barack.
After filing for divorce after Obama's birth, the normal course of action would have been for Obama's mother to apply for US citizenship for her child, which she would have eventually gotten.
Instead, with the possibility of a nasty upcoming legal battle, it's possible that the Dunhams simply filed a Certificate of Live Birth with the State of Hawaii after the fact in an effort to circumvent this quickly and create a paper trail.
A Certificate of Live Birth merely attests to the fact that a child was born, and according to Hawaiian law can indeed be filed after the fact. The short form Certificate of Live Birth is supposedly a summary of what's on the long form, but it does not contain an affidavit from the attending physician or the hospital. No one has seen the long form, including Hawaiian state officials, since Obama refuses to give anyone permission to access it and under Hawaiian law the record is legally sealed. One has to wonder why. As an interesting detail, there are two separate Hawaiian hospitals that have claimed to be Obama's birthplace.
And, to delve into speculation - just suppose that Obama's long form certificate, the one that Obama doesn't want anyone to see doesn't have any affidavits from a hospital or doctor but simply states that Obama was born at home, based on an affidavit by a friend or family member..maybe even his mother? That doesn't actually prove he wasn't born in Hawaii..but then again, it doesn't prove he was, and it might just lead to further questions that could prove uncomfortable. Which could be why Obama wants absolutely nobody to see it.
This desire by the Dunhams to avoid a possible custody fight and ensure Obama's status as a legal US citizen could also account for another detail that has been made much of, a birth announcement placed in the Honolulu Advertiser when Obama was born. After all, the reasoning goes, how could someone plan something like that from 47 years in the future,or foresee the need to protect a future president's citizenship status that far in the past?
The answer to that is actually pretty simple. Barack's mom and maternal grandparents had a major incentive to create a paper trail for Barack Obama's legal status as a US citizen that had nothing to do with his future status as a Presidential candidate. The last thing they wanted was to have to go through a custody fight in a Kenyan court against a black father over a black child. Even if in fact, as has been alleged, the notice was 'automatically printed' from the registry office, that would have been a product of the original Certificate, and it proves absolutely nothing. Just like one of those old murder mysteries, the Dunhams had both motive and opportunity.We simply don't know what actually happened - because all of Obama's records have been sealed under lock and key. Not just his birth record, but his records from the exclusive Punahou School, Occidental college, even most of his records and paperwork from Harvard.
But wait, there's more... the separate issue of Obama's Indonesian citizenship.
Around 1966, Obama's mother remarried an Indonesian national by the name of Lolo Soetoro and relocated with her son Obama to Indonesia. The Nationality Act of 1940 still in force at that time provided for a loss of citizenship when a child became naturalized in a foreign country when his custodial parent became a naturalized citizen of that foreign country. While there's some controversy over whether Stanley Ann Dunham actually became a naturalized Indonesian citizen, ( and the records seem to indicate she did) one thing that isn't in doubt was that Lolo Soetoro legally adopted Barack Obama, and he became Barry Soetoro and a naturalized Indonesian citizen.
While he was living with Lolo in Indonesia, Lolo had him registered in public school as an Indonesian citizen and a Muslim...at a time when you had to be an Indonesian citizen to use the public schools. The American practice was not to recognize dual citizenship, and that was also the law in Indonesia. Did Obama ever renounce his Indonesian citizenship as required by US law, as Rahm Emanuel did with his dual American-Israeli citizenship? There absolutely no record of anything like that happening.
The so-called 'birther' controversy continues to ferment for one reason - because President Obama's deliberate secrecy and furtive behavior keeps it alive.
As one recent example, an Army colonel recently refused to be deployed to Afghanistan and follow Obama's orders on the grounds it would put the colonel in legal jeopardy for obeying an unlawful order unless he saw proof Obama was a natural born citizen of the US, thus Constitutionally legal POTUS and thus legally commander in chief.
If this had gone to trial, legal requirements would have meant that all of Obama's sealed record would have been fair game for discovery, meaning that the defense would have an opportunity to examine them.
When the colonel took it to court, instead of slapping him into the stockade for insubordination, the Army hurriedly changed his orders and dropped the matter. Did they receive a call from the White House? We'll probably never know.
I'm hardly prone to conspiracy theories, but there's obviously a lot of things here that need to be cleared up. Obama, of course, could resolve all this speculation almost instantly, and I hope he does by releasing his records, since it's simply the right thing to do. As president, he took an oath to defend and protect the Constitution, and putting to rest any doubts about this matter obviously falls within his oath of office.
After all his blather about a new era of transparency, I think Obama owes a little candor and transparency to his fellow citizens. We elected him, and we deserve to know if that decision was made under false pretenses. It's time the mask came off.
This isn't the sort of thing even Barack Obama can vote 'present' on forever.Nor should it be.
In case some of you have forgotten, this is how a leader sounds.
Sarah Palin said her goodbye to the governor's office today in the heart of the Alaska she so obviously loves,(or perhaps more accurately, her hello to her new destiny) and she had a few remarks to make.No wonder the Left is petrified of her.
Sarah Palin is moving down the road, and I expect great things from her. The Left may well curse the day she decided to resign.
And speaking of the Left, the video below details the links between all those 'independent' ethics complaints and the Democrat machine that made an organized attempt to bankrupt the Palin family. I 've already written about one Chicago-style payoff detailed in this video, the appointment of Alaska Democrat State Senator Kim Elton, the partisan hack who led the charge on the bogus troopergate non-scandal to a cushy Washington job. Watch this and you'll see how the whole campaign against Palin was concocted and who some of the players were.
The Obama Administration continues to fumble in the Middle East, especially when it comes to Iran and Israel.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was first out of the box, going public by saying that the US was going to deal with a nuclear Iran by arming its allies in the Gulf and putting a "defense umbrella" over the region....or to put it another way, Iran having nukes is something the US can live with, and the Obama Administration will cope by lavishing up to date US armaments on the very same countries like Saudi Arabia that are outspokenly anti-Semitic and don't even recognize Israel's existence!
Needless to say, that didn't win the Obama Administration any points in Jerusalem, where Israeli government spokesmen were less than happy about the Obama Administration's tacit acceptance of what Israel rightly considers a genocidal threat.
She tried to recoup on 'Meet The Press', saying that Iran's quest for nuclear weapons was "futile", and that the US was going to prevent Iran from getting them, and that Israel was a US ally, yadda yadda. Based on what the Obama Administration has done so far in this area,I doubt it was convincing, even to the Mullahs ....who quite correctly see Obama having no strategy except to beg to negotiate.
The official line has been to link any US 'action' against Iran with Israel knuckling under to the Arabs' demands on Jerusalem and the rest of Judea and Samaria. Aside from being disgusting on the face of it for America to blackmail a long time loyal ally facing an existential threat in this fashion, the Israelis are unlikely to knuckle under for two very pragmatic reasons.
First, there's the question of exactly what type of action the Obama Administration has in mind.More ineffective sanctions that will be ignored by Russia and the EU, even if they happen by some wild twist of fate to get by a UN veto? Tell me, would you wager the lives of your loved ones on that bet?
The Obama Administration is far more likely to put sanctions on Israel than it is on Iran. And any military action to end Iran's nuclear threat will certainly not come from Barack Obama.
Second, there's the simple fact that Israel has absolutely no reason at this point to trust anything they're told by the US at all.
The US has already reneged on the deal made by President Bush with Ariel Sharon to get them to sign on to the Roadmap and pull out of Gaza, denying what President Bush committed to in his letter to Sharon and in a subsequent speech about the US honoring the right of Israel to claim Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria as part of any final settlement with the Palestinians.
According to Hillary Clinton, none of that ever happened..even though she voted the next day for a Senate resolution commending the President for the action! And she continues to toe the Obama line even when Bush Administration functionaries like Elliot Abrams, who actually was directly involved as deputy National Security Advisor confirmed the arrangement existed in the Washington Post.
The US also directly broke it's agreement with Israel on the Roadmap by endorsing the Saudi 'peace' ultimatum Obama is so thrilled about. According to the Roadmap, the US guaranteed Israeli PM Sharon that the US would only support the Road Map and no other plan, since it was in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.
Imagine how it sounds to the Israelis when Obama or one of his functionaries exhorts them to "honor their commitments under the Roadmap!"
And finally, when Obama pledged almost a billion dollars to rebuild Gaza, both he and Hillary Clinton swore up and down that none of that money would end up going directly to Hamas.In fact, that's exactly where it's going....not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars the US is funneling to Fatah to help them build an army under US general Keith Dayton, the American equivalent of Britain's Colonel John Glubb.
There's no reason whatsoever for Israel to trust anything coming from Obama, and in fact he's already done a fair amount of work in destroying the relationship between the two countries. Based on what I know about President Obama and his closest associates, this was likely his intention from the very beginning, regardless of American interests.
Since Israeli PM Netanyahu can already see that Obama is more than willing to break previous agreements in an attempt to 'deliver' Israel to his Arab friends, Netanyahu has very little to lose by simply defying him and going his own way. If someone's trying to force you to commit suicide, there's no great loss in distancing yourself from him.
Which means, ultimately, that the Israelis will do what they have to do and go their own way.And that America's friends and foes will have one more example of how Barack Obama does foreign policy, and react accordingly.
Hidey Ho, Primates! I'm back! Welcome to the one and only Real Banana, your source for the real poop on politics.
I know you've missed my wisdom, but I've been on an extensive college tour lecturing to America's primate youth and working on a couple biz deals..as a matter of fact, this Monkey is slated to be narrator on the Michael Jackson funeral DVD..both the with and without brain versions, available at the usual places soon.
Let's do it and get to it..
Today the story is the economy,plain and simple. It's a mess in DC, and this Monkey has real solutions. Now that my Democrats control everything, you'd expect a lot more to get done. Instead, it's like watching a bunch of baboons arguing about who's turn it is to pick the fleas off each other.
The stimulus itself might not have been such a bad idea, but giving the moolah to the same people that screwed things up in the first place without any accounting of where the money went as long as they kicked in to the campaign slush funds of Our Dear Leader or knew somebody who did was exactly the sort of thing I would have expected out of Obama. I feel free to say these things now that my efforts to get a soft job in the administration were so rudely ignored.
You don't tax people in a recession or spend money you haven't got...even a brain dead crack dealer knows that. You raise revenues and cut costs. Here's what this Monkey would do if he was sitting in the Oval Orifice.
Aside from grabbing up as much of the stimulus money I could get my paws on and keeping it from getting spent, the first thing I would do would be to legalize prostitution and drugs,make it a quasi-government enterprise like Fannie Mae,tax the wazoo out of them and institute horrific penalties for any black market dealers. No matter how bad things are, people still need poontang ( or in some cases, the beef torpedo) and getting high, and they'll pay for it. Especially if it comes with a guv'mint approved FDA stamp of approval. Aside from bringing in borkoo bucks, can you say full employment? Sure you can. As for me, I'd be proud to be known as the Drug Dealer and Pimp-In Chief who put Americans back to work and saved the economy.
The next thing I'd do would be to bring our guys and gals back from Iraq and Afghanistan and stop throwing our money away over there. Read the news? The Iraqis are cheering our leaving their cities as a 'victory' and want to be free to bond with their jihad pals next door...some allies, huh George W? We should leave and take anything with us that isn't nailed down as repayment for all that aid money.
In Afghanistan the locals want us out so they can go back to their accustomed 7th century way of behavior. Even Obama has admitted there's nothing much to win over there...not that he's acting on one of the few smart things he's come up with. I say we go. As a matter of fact, we could probably make deals on the way out with the local warlords for the opium needed to make the now legal drugs in my first idea. And since we could pay higher prices than the Taliban, that problem would be over and they'd either have to become a part of the new America driven drug economy or go back to having sex with sheep.And as a side operation, we could commish the Mafia or maybe even some of the more business oriented Taliban to burn the fields and settle any nasty problems with competition - permanently.
As a matter of fact, there's probably a lotta money we could cut back on when it comes to foreigners. We're broke. Why are we giving tons o' bucks to the UN? What are they gonna do if we don't pay, toss us out? And then watch as we evict them so they have to set up a new HQ in Zimbabwe or Gaza? Heeheehee! I say we start charging them BIG Manhattan -style rent, with a bonus just because we can.
Another place we can cut back is on labor costs here in America, and the huge dollars we spend trying to catch, litigate and deport illegal aliens. The social costs for things like welfare, schooling, medical care and earned income credits, not to mention crime are bankrupting us.
I have already addressed this during my presidential campaign, and I still think the answer is comprehensive immigration reform.
The current proposals are limited in that they only target illegal workers currently in America, with the idea of somehow making them legal and subject to minimum wage laws.
That's no way to ensure continued cheap labor!
Imagine how much money we'd save if the US created a program to bring monkeys and apes from around the world to America as guest workers for industries like fast food, agriculture, construction, carwashes, gardening, house cleaning and similar businesses.
Monkeys and apes can do these jobs much cheaper and more efficiently than illegal aliens...they will practically work for peanuts. And there are thousands of my fellow primates who would jump at the chance to swing into the jungle that is America.
Monkeys and apes will pick your crops, wash your cars and clean your toilets. All they're asking for is an even break, a departure from the species-ist prejudices of the past.
After all, if we can create one set of special policies aimed at creating a low wage underclass and exploit their labor, why not another, especially when it saves us billions of dollars and keeps the price of labor down..wa-ay down! And think of the savings on education and health care.. most apes and monkeys do.. er... home schooling, as it were, and many diseases that afflict humans are not transferable from their fellow primates.
Rather than try to utilize an inefficient government bureaucracy to kick primates of one species out, we can concentrate on bringing in the kind of primates who will be a major boon to the economy, create new opportunities and let the marketplace sort the situation out as higher priced primates self deport out of the country.
Imagine the boost to America's small businesses! And productivity? Do you have any idea how strong a chimp is or how hard a gorilla can swing a hammer? I tell ya, Donkey Kong wasn't the half of it.
This is a win-win scenario, and a major opportunity for America to experience real diversity.
Is President Obama even considering any of these bold moves? Nuh Uh.
We need a new direction in Washington, especially considering that old Democratic principle of counting every vote that counts and discounting those that don't. Believe me, I can count that way too.
With Al Franken in the Senate, cracks about 'those clowns in Washington' will take on a brand new meaning, and if Franken can get in, don't be surprised if I don't take a stab at it. You could be addressing me as Senator Monkey in the future....
Smell yah later, Primates!
Weekend Monkey was a Democratic candidate for president in 2008 and is JoshuaPundit's political Guru. He can be reached at wendmonkey@yahoo.com
"There is no laughter in Islam"- Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini
Sasha Baron Cohen, creator and star of the hit film "Bruno " is on the receiving end of threats from none other than the Al--Aksa Martyr's Brigade.
These are the Fatah terrorists on the payroll of 'moderate' Mahmoud Abbas. Or more correctly, on the payroll of the taxpayers of the EU and the US:
In the film, Bruno, a television journalist interviews Ayman Abu Aita, who is claimed in the movie to be the leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
Mr Baron Cohen's character implores Mr Abu Aita to capture him, saying, "I want to be famous. I want the best guys in the business to kidnap me. Al-Qaeda is so 2001."
Mr Abu Aita and his associates were angry by his portrayal according to the statement published by the Jerusalem bureau of the World Net Daily.
"We reserve the right to respond in the way we find suitable against this man. The movie was part of a conspiracy against the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades," the statement read.
Of course, the fact that Cohen is a Jew has absolutely nothing to do with it.Ri-ight.
I find it fascinating that the Telegraph actually saw fit to use the "t" word, for a change.Although they didn't ID them as part of Fatah...can't let people start questioning all that aid money Abbas and his pals are getting, now can we?
By all means, give them a state. What could go wrong?
I have a wonderful treat in store for the members of Joshua's Army today...a six part interview with Joan Peters.
One of the very best books ever written about the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian refugee situation is From Time Immemorial by prize winning author Peters, who made her bones as a reporter going undercover against the Klu Klux Klan . Written in 1984, it came about when Harper's commissioned her to write a book about the plight of the Palestinian refugees. Instead, after doing research which involved going back to the original Ottoman and British sources, she produced a seminal work for understanding the background of the Arab-Israeli conflict and how the 'Palestinians' came to be.
As the book became a bestseller, pro-Arab sources and anti-Israel Leftards like Noam Chomsky and Norman Finklestein mounted a major disinformation campaign to destroy the book and the author's credibility, but have never quite managed to destroy it...because the truth does out, most of the time.
In this interview, she relates how she came to write the book, and gives us perspective on the Arab-Israeli conflict in the twenty five years since it was written...in particular, the propaganda war waged against Israel on America's campuses. Fascinating, even with a less than stellar interviewer who has the saving grace of letting this brave reporter tell her story...a must-see.
The Henry Louis Gates Jr. incident currently dominating the media is a superb example of how cynical and self-serving the entire race pimping industry in America has become. As usual, there's a back story here the media aren't telling you about.
If you read the police report of the Gates’ arrest, it's pretty obvious exactly what happened. A woman saw two men with backpacks breaking into a house and called 911. A police officer, Sergeant James Crowley, responded to the radio call, and saw someone inside the house. When the person( who turned out to be Gates) said he was the owner, Crowley did exactly what he was supposed to do - he identified himself as a police officer asked Gates to confirm his identity, and wanted to know about any other persons in the house.
Gates refused to cooperate or provide his ID and began screaming at Crowley that he was racist, that this was only happening 'because I'm a black man in America' and that who was in his house was none of Crowley's business. He then told Crowley that he 'had no idea who he was messin' with' and that he hadn't heard the last of this.
After Crowley finally manged to get a Harvard ID out of Gates, he radioed and asked for the Harvard University police to be present, and began to leave once they arrived. Gates continued screaming at him yelling 'This is what happens to Black men in America' and creating a public disturbance. After warning him twice, Crowley arrested him for disorderly conduct.
Now, we both know that had he wanted to, Professor Gates could have resolved this in a matter of minutes, simply by confirming whom he was and providing his ID. Why didn't he?
Just by coincidence, Gates has a new TV series planned with PBS as well as yet another documentary about the plight of the black man in America in the works. Yesterday, he made the rounds of the dinosaur media yakking it up about how he, as a proud black man, got in the face of a rogue cop and stood up for his ' rights.'
Anyone else besides me think that this little scuffle and the media frenzy surrounding it might just result in higher ratings for Gates, some well paying speaking engagements and more lucrative book deals? You bet it will. And I guarantee Gates figured that out as well as soon as he noticed that the policeman involved was working solo and white.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is almost universally identified as a 'prominent black scholar' by the media, but in reality he's simply a professional Black Man, a race hustler with an exaggerated sense of his own importance. During the height of the affirmative action and diversity fetish in the 1970's, he received massive financial support from the top foundations in America and ended up with a BA in history from Yale, tried law school and ended up dropping out.
After that, he fell on his feet and became a fixture in academia, finding out that there was real gold in African American studies. Like Cornell West, James Cone, and others of that ilk who make a living off of 'racial studies' , Gates was just black enough to be authentic to the guilty white leftists that employed him and just polished enough and non threatening to be viable.
He specializes in condemning what he calls 'the Eurocentric bias' in history and literary studies, making him a staunch deconstructionist ( an academic term that translates as meaning that you can bend facts and accepted standards to fit your political agenda anytime you feel like it). Needless to say, with that viewpoint he's a minor god and in high demand in academic circles.
The controversy received an extra boost when President Obama decided to weigh in at the very end of his ObamaCare infomercial the other night, first admitting he didn't know all the facts and then referring to the Cambridge police force (and by extension, Sergeant Crowley) as acting 'stupidly'. He then went on to describe this as an example of racial profiling....AKA ' there's is still much work to be done on racism in America, this is a teachable moment' ad nauseum.
The idea of a president of the United States going off half cocked and demonizing a police officer without even really knowing what he was talking about struck even some of his supporters as odd. I can't imagine why.
Like Gates, Obama has never shied away from playing the race card when he saw it to his advantage. And Barack Obama has always been about excusing black racism when it suited him. Anyone who paid any close attention to his speech on the matter in Philadelphia should have figured that out by now. And in case they haven't, the man Obama appointed as his Attorney General, what he had to say on white racism in America, and the deliberate failure of the Obama justice department to prosecute people like the Black Panthers for voter intimidation ought to clue them in to Obama's underlying attitude on race.
Obama sold his white followers on the idea of a post-racial America, with the implicit promise that if America just voted him in the country could atone for its racist guilt and put that era behind it. Obama became the ultimate affirmative action candidate, a man who's past was an unknown and who's experience and qualifications for the job of president were problematical,but whose persona could be marketed to manipulate the section of the electorate willing to buy into the novelty of the first black president - and the implicit cover for many of them who simply weren't all that comfortable with black people on a personal level.
Obviously, Obama's promise of a post-racial America was one that he never even remotely intended to keep.
Nor can we eliminate the class aspect of all this. Both Gates and Obama come from the same social strata, that of the Ivy league elite. Doors were opened for them that few people of any color ever experience. Is it any wonder that Gates would savage a white, blue collar cop for daring to have the temerity to question someone of his exalted status? Or that Obama would reflexively jump on that bandwagon? The president seriously miscalculated, largely because of the history of this particular policeman. Otherwise, Sergeant Crowley would likely have gotten the Joe the Plumber treatment.
The White House is currently in major damage control mode, but to any critical observer, this is definitely a teachable moment, and a revealing one. Although perhaps not how Obama intended it to be.
Black author Larry Elder in his best selling book 'The Ten Things You Can't Say In America' devoted a whole chapter to the idea that in present day America, blacks are, generally speaking, more racist than whites.
We were told by Secretary of State Clinton and the White House that Hamas, of course, would never get its hands directly on any of it and it would be closely monitored to make sure none of the funds were used inappropriately.
At the time, I said that Clinton's remarks were out and out nonsense:
This jizya from the Obama administration will enable these scum to use all their money and facilities to purchase weaponry, rebuild their tunnels and bunkers and pursue the War against the Jews. It will be used to kill Israeli civilians.
Well, guess what? The genocidal terrorists of Hamas are going to get American money directly after all...and no one is even bothering to hide the fact:
Increasingly concerned that Hamas will steal money donated for Gaza's rehabilitation, the Defense Ministry distributed a document this week revealing that unions affiliated with the terrorist group have set up joint committees with UN agencies that dispense humanitarian aid.
The document was distributed to the Foreign Ministry, Finance Ministry and the Israeli intelligence community, and was also sent to the United States to warn it that the $900 million it has pledged to help rebuild the Gaza Strip could fall into Hamas hands.
"All humanitarian aid sent into the Gaza Strip today needs to receive Hamas clearance," a senior defense official told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. "Hamas uses violence against international organizations, including UNRWA, if they do not cooperate."
Hamas recently published an ad in a Palestinian newspaper warning that "whoever does not follow its orders will be forced to leave Gaza."
The internal Defense Ministry document revealed that on July 12, a meeting was held between UNRWA, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Hamas officials who are in charge of the contractors and engineer unions in the Gaza Strip.
The objective was to establish a mechanism which will be responsible for distributing the billions of dollars pledged for the rehabilitation of the Strip by the US and European and Arab countries.{...}
At the meeting, Hamas officials told the UN representatives they wanted to be able to draw up the list of people who would receive the money, according to the Defense Ministry document. The sides decided to set up joint committees and to continue to meet in the future.
"This is an indication to us that there is no effective mechanism that can be established that will bypass Hamas and ensure the money goes straight to the Palestinian people," the senior defense official said.
And UNRWA's response? They're just fine with that.
In response to the report, UNRWA Spokesman Chris Gunness released a statement saying: "UNRWA distributes its aid on basis of need. Humanitarian need dictates the way we distribute aid and nothing else."
That would be 'humanitarian needs' as dictated by Hamas, as well as totally ignoring the human needs of Jews who are going to be targeted by Hamas.
Of course, the big plan of the Obama Administration and the EU is ultimately to legitimize Hamas the same way Yasir Arafat and the PLO were sanitized for the Oslo debacle.
The EU needs to keep its restive Muslim population calm by demonizing Israel and in essence contributing to a second Holocaust. And Obama? He just likes the idea of eliminating any relationship between what he obviously sees as that white colonialist state of Israel and America to appease his friends in the Muslim world so he can concentrate on his domestic agenda. That's simply who Obama is.
You see, Barack Hussein Obama wasn't snoozing in Rev Wright's church all those years after all. No matter what those silly Jews that shilled for Obama during the campaign and continue to fantasize about him being pro-Israel thought.
