Terrorists or just Muslims

            Everywhere I listen, they are claiming that ISIS and other terrorists are not true Muslims, or are hijackers of their faith.  Hence we hear all sorts of excuses about what makes people self-radicalize or join a radical group.  Obama and company seem to be saying that it comes from lack of opportunity and no jobs for Islamic youth. 

            In actual fact the demographics and teachings of Islam point in exactly the opposite direction, that it is the religion itself that radicalizes.  A central deficiency of Islam is that God has no love and all people go to hell upon death except those who earn God’s favor to heaven by doing a life-ending jihad.  These “martyrs” circumvent hell and go straight to heaven.  What of the other Muslims who are in hell?  God lets them suffer for a time, some forever. “But for him whose balance [of good deeds] is light, he will have his home in hell.” Sura 101:6-9.  God has some mercy but it is unpredictable. Hence individuals are in competition for God’s attention.

            Doctor Mark Gabriel, 15 years an imam of Giza, Egypt and scholar of Al-Azhar University of Egypt (Most prestigious Muslim school in Cairo), says that Muslims are scared to death of hell.  Reza Safa, former Iranian terrorist, calls Muslims a people terrorized by their own belief.  What do you do if you are a Muslim who has it all—money, career, family, education?  Your final act of life is to do jihad and go to heaven.  Gabriel says that Allah is something of a cosmic sadist who loves to lead people astray (Sura 6:39,126), and is full of discrimination against women, Christians, and Jews.”There is no guarantee of Paradise, even if you do good works all your life.  It all depends on what Allah decides.” Gabriel, Islam and Terrorism, pg.27

            And so if you look at the demographics of terrorists, you don’t see dregs of society, men of hopelessness, committing jihadic violence.  It is upstanding citizens.  The nineteen 9/11 bombers were all foreign students or engineers working in USA. Just think how privileged they were, select students from a third world country to study in America, and well-paid professionals. The 4 doctors who bombed the Glasgow airport terminal were physicians working in England.  The underwear bomber’s father was an important official in an African government who tried to warn US authorities of his son.  Usama bin Laden was heir to a billion dollars.  These are not hopeless goatherders.  These are influential folks.

            What then of all the peaceful Muslims?  Safa says that these are people who don’t take the faith too seriously, like half-agnostic Christians.  “Secularized Muslims.”   

            And the religion is also politics intermingled inseparably.  Mawlana Abul Ala Mawdudi, the founder of Pakistan’s fundamentalist movement writes, “Islam is not a normal religion like other religions…are very special because they have a command from Allah to rule the entire world and to be over every nation in the world.  Islam can use every power available every way it can be used to bring worldwide revolution.  This is jihad.”  The Arabic word for war is also the word for deception.  Abi Hamid Al Gahazali, founder of Sufism states: “Know this that lying is not a sin by itself, but if it brings harm to you it could be ugly.  However, you can lie if that will keep you from evil or if it will result in prosperity.”  It is also held by most Muslim sects that if a leader is not behaving according to the Quran, you can denounce him as apostate and kill him. (Justified by the Haditha or writings about Mohammad, which are sacred as is the Quran.) Thus ISIS kills fellow Muslims from the Shiite sect or Jordan or Turkey.

The mindset is to fight evil.  Fight evil and win is to win glory.  Fight evil and lose is to win God’s favor.  Either way, you just fight evil that you perceive. 

            Consequently, there is no compromise with a jihadist.  Social programs don’t work.  Appeasement doesn’t work.  And it is all in the teaching of the Quran, Haditha, and Sharia.   

Standing with the Muslims

            Why no action on the Middle East?  Well, of course, Obama plays to the anti-war movement in the Dems and wants no boots on the ground.  But could there be more to it?  Obama, after all, says in his first book on page 261, “If a controversy ever arises, I will stand with the Muslims.”  But since he doesn’t believe that any of the violent things happening are truly Muslim-- just a bunch of rouge people who have hijacked the faith-- why isn’t our Prez standing with Al Sisi of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan?   Why keep making excuses for Iran, protecting them from getting sanctions and advancing their desire for nuclear arms?  Why not arm the Kurds?  Perhaps there are two keys to understanding his actions.  First, “Islam is Islam” as Erdogan, prime minister of Turkey says.  There are different interpretations, but in opposition to the West, basically all Muslims cheer the West getting destroyed.  So for someone who has been through Islamic schools as a child and now says he will stand with the Muslims, means he is out to transform America into an Islamic state. That brings us to the second key, Valerie Jarrett.

            That’s what Valerie Jarrett told a crowd at Stanford, her old Alma Mater.  “I am Iranian by birth and of my Islamic faith. I am also an American citizen and I seek to help change America to be a more Islamic country. My faith guides me and I feel like  it is going well in the transition of using freedom of religion in America against itself.”  Who is she? “Jarrett is ground zero in the Obama operation, the first couple’s first friend and consigliere.  Once asked by a reporter if he ran every decision by Jarrett, Obama answered with hesitation: ‘Yep.  Absolutely.’ “  (Ed Klein, The Amateur).  Jarrett occupies Hillary Clinton’s old office  in the second floor of the West Wing and has an “all access pass” to any meeting she chooses.  She dines nightly with the Obama family, is the only staff member who vacations with them, and serves as their eyes, ears, and nose around Washingtion.  But she keeps herself hidden to the media and gives no statements. She is staunchly leftist and Muslim and like Barack, “has a fundamental lack of respect for businessmen.” (The Amateur, pg.87)  When everybody was advising Obama to surge Afghanistan, she opposed it until he only gave Petraus half the forces he said he needed.  She also urged passage of Obamacare with whatever false promises, even though Senate Democrats wavered when no Republican could be found to vote in favor.  She pressed for support of Muslim Brotherhood in the revolt against Mubarack.   In the one decision that her opinion lost, Obama gave approval after 10 months of waffling to kill or seize Bin Laden, because he worried that if the word got out that he knew where Osama was and didn’t do anything, he would pay a steep political price.

            And it is said that Jarrett really isn’t that smart—just ideological to a fault. She became best friend with Michelle when she hired Michelle to work for the Daley machine.  Jarrett had a history of one failed project after another, but she introduced the Obama’s to the upper echelon of Chicago Democrats and big donors.  She keeps herself out of the limelight in exchange for the constant ear of the President.

            Rev. Jeremiah Wright gave Klein the most surprising interview for his book.  He said that the Obama’s were rare church attendees (“Church is not their thing.”) and that all that narrative about how he had been a spiritual guide to Barack for 20 years was not so true, more political propaganda.  Finally Klein asked point blank, “Did you convert Obama from Islam to Christianity?”  At which point, Wright replied, “That’s hard to tell.”  So why then, did Obama keep his name on the church registry? Wright: “the church was integral part of Barack’s politics.  Because he needed that black base.”

Who said Williams is the only liar?

            I was reading a nationally syndicated author intone seriously that conservatives only believe the media is lying because Spiro Agnew once attacked the media.  Since then all conservatives have been deranged.  I remember that era.  But it wasn’t Agnew that did it for me.  I was working for the Weather Bureau which had just been renamed NOAA.  We had a teletype in the corner which was the 1970 equivalent of the internet—the only thing that would give up to the minute news.  Every night before I went home, I’d look at the weather forecasts.  Then half an hour later would watch the TV weather forecaster.  Amazingly, they would often not give the forecasts from NOAA, their only source for those forecasts.  (Remember, computers with less power than your iphone were the size of a large commercial building in the1970s.)  What they would often broadcast was an exaggeration of any unusual condition.  In other words, they sensationalized with a lie.  An inch of snow became half a foot perhaps.  Thus, when the forecasted disaster didn’t occur, people would say, “Whew! good thing that didn’t happen!” and promptly forget the missed forecast.  But if the weather actually became a disaster and everyone said, “How do I get this partly cloudy off my car?” another person might say, “well, you should have watched channel 15.  They predicted all this!” Channel 15 gained viewers. 

            The psychology that people remember disastrous predictions when they come true, but forget them when they don’t is a well-founded principle of psychological self-defense.  The forecasters used this consistently. 

            Another happening in my life of the early seventies was graduate school.  As a Graduate Teaching Assistant, I taught physics labs and graded papers.  The Journalism majors were infamous for unteachability.  You’d ask students to boil water and graph the temperatures.  Most students could do this and realize an obvious fact.  The temperature rises until it reaches 212 degrees at which point the increase stops as energy is used to turn the water turn to steam.  The journalists would often launch into all sorts of atomic  and chemical explanations which made no sense at all.  (Don’t make a bunch of physics grad students angry by trying to snow them about atomic physics!) We laughed that we wanted to get a big BULLSPIT stamp made to stamp all such papers. This would save us the chore of long, handwritten explanations about why the student was full of baloney.  (Okay, so I lied about the “P” in the stamp.)  Therein is the skill of journalists.  They may have fact A and fact B but in between they just make a bunch of good-sounding stuff up.  Else, in a perplexing and unexplained world, they have little to publish.  Their skill and style is to convince the reader or listener of their expertise and thorough research.

            In the old days of journalism, prior to the seventies, editors demanded that reporters ascertain more facts.  The public demanded truth in what they read and it was horribly embarrassing for a newspaper to get caught in a lie.  In those days, many reporters were not educated people.  These Mike Ryoko types just pounded the streets and interviewed incessantly until they had a story.  If you wrote simply from your feelings , not facts, that was for the Opinion page, not the front page. (or yellow journalism, tabloids, etc.)  But a school of journalism arose that claimed that no writer can divorce himself from his own opinions, even when trying to be objective.  So why bother?  Advocacy Journalism began to replace Objective Journalism in the 70’s and especially after the Watergate scandal.  Now it was okay to just fill in the blanks with opinion if you could disguise it cleverly.  The public still expected Truth, but you would give them a story. Journalists often had college degrees and didn’t want to do the dirty work of fact finding except perhaps to sit in an office and search the internet.  The Net cut into profits for the news organizations and fewer investigative folks were left.  Hence the mainstream media is left with many serial exaggeraters, narrative writers, and anchormen who just make spit up. (Sorry, I lied about the ‘p’ in ‘spit’ again. Add to this, the observation that modern (especially leftist) audiences just want to hear what they agree with and don’t care about the facts. From all this havoc, are spawned other mediums of talk radio and bloggers who make much sport of exposing the constant journalistic fibbing.  

            So it isn’t Agnew at all.  I wish someone on TV would say it plainly like this.  I guess they are all journalists and would be fired from such cannibalistic exposés.

How states can block illegals trying to vote

Federal Law, as I understand, says that a voter registration must be provided to anyone with either a valid SS# or driver’s license who signs a statement that they are a valid US citizen. Here is a couple ideas about flagging non-citizens trying to do voter registrations.

Method 1.  Just add 3 simple questions to the registration form.  (First, the state could assume all current voters in their voter database are citizens. Only new registrations are in question.)

            In addition to asking the last 4 digits of a social security number, it could be asked, “When issued?” with two check boxes, “Before 2014” and “2014 through present”. Those who answer before would not necessarily be screened since they predate Obama’s executive order.  These would identify and eliminate 99% of voter registration apps for the normal reasons (relocation, first voter citizens, etc.).  So if 50,000 new registrations are to be processed, perhaps 500 would remain for more scrutiny.

Next ask “date of birth” and “place of birth”. For example: the applicant says January 1,1931, Montpelier, VT.  The election board simply calls Vermont and asks if a birth certificate for this person exists.  If the applicant says, 1952, Matamoros, Mexico, then the election board asks for naturalization papers or ID.  If the person replies that they were born of US citizens living abroad, then have them come to election board office and provide a statement of parents names and circumstances of birth.

            Now this presupposes that we can legally add 3 questions on the registration form--even if we don’t technically require answers.  Just don’t tell the applicant.  See if they volunteer the information.

            Method 2. If that’s not allowed legally, I have another plan that might catch most of the illegals who try to vote.  The state controls driving and licensing, yah?  So when an illegal comes to get a driver’s license, have them provide information concerning their citizenship status any number of ways.  The above questions, passport, citizenship papers, birth certificates, all manner of stuff could be required.  This needn’t deprive them of a valid license.  Give ‘em one.  But on any illegal’s license it should be noted what their citizenship status is, either by code number or even a heading like, “Undocumented Arrival”.  Then when voter registration forms come to the election board, provide a cross-check of full names and addresses with Driver’s license information.  Anyone found to be a non-citizen on a DL who is trying to vote should be dealt with accordingly.  

            Sorry.  I was a small businessman who hired a lot of min wage workers. Some stole from our company and took advantage of us.  But I was extremely fearful of wrongfully firing people, so I specialized in designing cunning traps that absolutely proved their guilt before we let them go.

SNL skits

Maybe I need to write skits for SNL. 

            First could be Obama doing Are you smarter than a 5^th grader?  The question could be 4^th grade Social Studies, “What are the 3 branches of government?”  And of course Obama would answer, “Me, Myself, and I.”

            Or think of Barack on Wheel of Fortune and the category is A Name, “_SLAM_C  TERROR_SM”  And Obama says, “Gee, I have no idea, Pat.  Can I buy a vowel?”  Meanwhile Vanna buries her head in her hand.

            Or Jeopardy.  Rudimentary Economics, for 800.  “7 million new jobs, but 17 million new adults become available for work” And Barack says, “What is a booming economy?”  

           

This doesn’t look hard to me.

           

             How about Obama doing Super Bowl commentary.  Coster says, “We just can’t understand why the Sea Hawks ran a pass play.  What do you think Barack?”  “Hey, I’m scanning the sidelines to see if Bush is one of the coaches.”

            Or maybe we could cast Obama as televangelist.  He could give sermons about how the crusades were equivalent to Islamic terrorism of the twenty-first century and how it’s all our fault for not being humble enough. Down in the front row is Rev. Al interjecting, “I believe!” and “preach, Brother, preach!”.  Call it Hour of Power.

            Or imagine infomercials for all the latest gadgets, illustrated by Barack on his golf cart.  “You can use the Reddi-Grip to hold your cell phone to the dash of this golf cart and with these super wipers, I don’t ever have to come off the course when it rains.”

 

            You’re getting bored with Obama, so let’s think of some other hits.

            What Not To Wear could feature Bruce Jenner. Stacey London: “Now chose a tank top with discretion; not one where your girls hang out.”

            John Kerry could have a new show, “The French Whisperer”.

            History Channel docudrama, Life of Young Washington, played by Brian Williams.  Tune in again for Williams’ classic performance of Honest Abe. Supporting actress, Lois Lerner plays his wife, Mary.

            This year’s Oscars could be hosted by Ellen DeGenerus, which only proves that not everybody loves Raymond.  Best Picture to Halt An Arab Spring would go to the guy who made the anti-Muslim video that the Justice Dept. threw in prison.  Accepting for the author is Susan Rice, publicity director.

            WWE hosts the Championship of North America Grudge Match between Harry Reed and Mitch McConnell tag teams.  After the fight, Harry looked pretty bad with an eye patch and bandages.  He told a reporter, “I don’t know what happened.  Landrieu was supposed to tag but she was nowhere around when this Joni woman put me in a head-over-heels hold and kept yelling, ‘where’s my knife?’  That’s when I passed out.”

 

There is just no end to the material.

Crusades

So Oblamer wants to say that ISIS is equivalent to the Crusades?  I beg to disagree.  That the 57-state guy doesn’t know his history is perhaps no surprise but he tips his “If ever there is a controversy, I will stand with Muslims” hand.  Muslims consider the Christian Crusades a singular atrocity.  That’s where Obama is coming from with his Muslim upbringing. 

            But the truth about the Crusades is nothing akin to ISIS.  Terrorists kill with cruelty almost inhuman, thinking they are following their scriptures. They want to take over the world with a Caliphate in the sense of Hitler or Trotsky or Genghis Khan.  Crusaders did neither.  But the version of the crusades that I learned in High School was just as incorrect.  That narrative was simply that the Pope sent a bunch of guys on a holy war to win back the Holy land.  Wrong.  Much more involved and interesting than this.

            The first crusade started as a defensive call to arms against the incursions of the Seljuk Turks.  The barbarian Seljuks had come out of Central Asia and conquered Asia Minor (Turkey, today) and Syria from the Byzantine empire, defeating them in the battle of Manziert, 1071.  The Byzantine emperor pleaded desperately with the Pope to send help, lest the Turks would invade Europe and subject all of Christendom.  Now the Pope and Archbishops of Eastern Orthodoxy had just had a big row in 1054 over icons and had split, but the Pope carefully considered the plea.  Here’s why.  In the West, the last of the barbarian invaders—Vikings, Magyars (Hungarians), and Saxons had just been pacified and Christianized but they were CINO’s, Christians in name only.  Marauding knights and nobles fought petty wars against each other and were causing much suffering and instability.  The Popes pondered what to do and decided to reform the papacy to make it more political, so that they could requisition knights and become feudal monarchs.  Make the new barbarians civilized by mutual favors owed.  So Pope Urban called for a crusade to help the Byzantines. Some speculate that Urban wanted to retake the East, but there is little evidence of it.  The whole thing didn’t work as planned.  True to form, the marauding Crusader knights didn’t obey the Eastern Emperor and took matters into their own hands, raiding Byzantium and even overthrowing the brave Christian Orthodox ruler of Edessa who had successfully resisted the Muslim onslaught. 

            But the Seljuks weren’t content to attack Constantinople.  They also went after the Fatimid Caliphate, a big Islamic empire that stretched from Bagdad to N. Africa and occupied the holy land.  As the eleventh century progressed, both the Seljuk empire and Fatimid empires fractured into smaller states.   These fought over Jerusalem and thousands of Christians were slaughtered.  Church of the Holy Seplucre was destroyed.  Pilgrims—Jews, Christians, and Muslims—had previously had peaceful passage.  Muslims now robbed them and often killed them. This headline evoked another reason for a crusade—recapture Jerusalem to restore order. 

            And so the Crusaders did, managing to massacre a bunch of Muslims, Jews and Christians in the process of taking Jerusalem.  This is what the Muslims consider so detestable.  But in fact, cruelty and massacres were common in the Dark Ages.  Muslims aggrandize Saladin, a latter day hero who reconquered the Crusader states a century later after half a dozen failed crusades by insufficient and ill-led forces. 

            What is interesting about Barack Hussein Obama is that he seems to want to pick fights with Christians as this latest Prayer Breakfast lecture once again shows. This follows his lawsuit against Lutherans demanding EEOC get to pick their ministers, Catholics mandated to buy birth control, Hobby Lobby to buy abortifacients, military chaplains ordered not to preach the gospel, etc.   Apparently he wants to turn his back on Christian Democrats, a puzzling thing.  For years, these folks have been in the forefront of union organization and social justice initiatives.  Why is he trying to make them so rare?  I think more than anything it proves his own lack of faith and discomfort with Christians.  Like he says on page 261 of his book, he is going to stand with the Muslims.