We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time. - Vince Lombardi

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Just after one year of “Hope and Change” it looks like people are wising up that they got sold the same bill of loser collectivist goods of the Carter years, and pining for those bad days they told us we had when republicans were in charge. As reality clashes with fantasy and things like this, this, this, this, this, this, and this keep happening, the democrats continue to pretend that what people want is bigger government, a complete takeover of healthcare - 1/5th of the economy - by that big government, and a massive migration from jobs in the private sector to a fraction of the number of jobs lost there in the public sector. And that doesn’t tackle the complete collapse of the AGW scam which wanted to expand the government take over globally and other such stupid ideas. At least Clinton was smart enough to be saved by a republican takeover of congress in 2004. I doubt Obama, a true believer, will be able to make the same connections. After all, he was told he was the messiah and could walk on water.

As I said before, a few years of the democrats in power would be enough to make many see the light. I just didn’t think it could take but one year for that to happen. I could not believe that the democrats were really this inept and stupid, but they are hard at work proving me both right and wrong. Democrats are good at manipulating the news, with help of the complicit MSM, to attack their opponents when they are in power. Unfortunately now that they are in power, even with massive help covering up for them by the MSM, they can’t hide how inept they are. Reality has a way of destroying most collectivist fantasies, and what is happening isn’t anything new. The fun thing is that I get to bring out my latest find, a poster on some highway in the Mid West that tells the story better than anything else:

Give it time. The numbers are getting bigger and bigger, and all but the most hard core leftists are agreeing that for all his faults, and he had them believe me, Bush was heads and shoulders a better president than the current community organizer in chief….

Thursday, January 07, 2010

I hope the people at USA Today were being ironic when they put up this article about how Americans are going to be shocked by this whole sordid underwear bomber affair. The shock I experienced was at this quote from Obama:

President Obama “is legitimately and correctly alarmed that things that were available, bits of information that were available, patterns of behavior that were available, were not acted on,” Jones said in an interview Wednesday with USA TODAY.

WTF? Obama and his team that had been handpicked precisely so they could put terrorism on the back burner and go back to the days of pretending this was not a problem, now wants to make like there is a problem? Let me ask again: WTF? The decision to minimize the terror threat - and I should also add shifting the focus to their political opposition by making it policy to look harder at dissatisfied conservatives, which Janet Napolitano and crew called more dangerous than the Islamic radicals - was a conscious and deliberate move by this administration, starting right with the president that belongs to the party that has been campaigning on the fact that fighting terrorism was creating more terrorism!

In fact, they did not stop there. This WH has actively, directly and indirectly attacked everyone that followed Bush era policies intended to actually prevent terror attacks. What the moonbats and the MSM fail to realize or report, be it on purpose or simply because of ideological stupidity, is that it was not a coincidence that during the Bush years we had no more attacks after 9-11. The SOP then was to treat these people as serious threats: we were at war. The left demonized Bush for doing that too. When the donkeys won and decided to sideline Islamic terrorism – people opposing Obama and the left’s agenda were the only real terrorists worth bothering about - and again make it just your average run of the mill criminal activity, what did they expect to happen? That the terrorist would quit in sympathy? What did they think their campaign to demonize and punish the people that had taken the Bush era orders and directives to prevent more terror attacks – like their campaign to go after the CIA for actually once doing what it took to stop attacks – and use them to take a poke at the top members of the Bush administration would lead to? I don’t if it takes a genius to figure it out, and don’t know about you, but if my new boss tries to punish me for diligently & effectively following orders of given by my old boss, orders that actually worked and matter, I think my attitude will simply become to avoid doing anything and everything that might be then used against me. That’s human nature. So you will pardon me for not wanting to give Obama a pass now that he and his team say that there was a problem connecting the dots? SHYA!

These idiots don’t get it. They can not have it both ways. If you do not take this threat seriously and deal with it as such, if your politically motivated efforts to score cheap points against your predecessor with your lunatic base obviously will result in problems but you still go ahead with it, and more importantly, if you continue to try and pretend that just because you have decided to stop dealing with these people that have declared war on us as such, don’t act surprised when they not only come at you harder and more frequently. And please don’t pretend it is not your fault. We got lucky. This bastard was stopped. Sooner than later however, especially with the current attitude towards the war against these terrorists and radicals, one of these twisted monsters will get lucky and people will die.

But don’t worry. They have a plan.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said a “very comprehensive no-fly list” would be “the greatest protection our country has.” In an interview, she said the definition of who can be included should be expanded to include anyone about whom there is “a reasonable suspicion.”

Yeah, I am sure this will work. These government bureaucrats are so good with lists. Treating this threat with the seriousness it deserves and actually acknowledging the left is damned wrong about the way it approaches this entire issue, for pure political reasons nevertheless, is not going to happen. Don’t thus be surprised when we get more of the same. So far it does look like the terrorists sure love the Obama presidency just like the left promised us the world would.

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

I have often told liberals that the greatest vindication of the Bush policies would come from the next elected democrat doing more of the same and the left suddenly twisting itself into pretzels justifying that, and it has not even been a full year yet since Bush left that these tools are not letting me down.

After a year with President Barack Obama at the helm of U.S. foreign policy, an observer could be forgiven for concluding that the presidency is more like taking over the controls of a train than getting behind the wheel of a car. That’s because you can’t steer a train; you can only determine its speed. So far, the menu of foreign policy challenges, and the Administration’s response to each, is remarkably similar at the close of 2009 to what it was at the close of 2008.

Obama’s promises of outreach to adversaries and consultation and coordination with allies certainly cleared away some of the negative atmospherics left by the Bush Administration. However, his substantial policy positions have proven to be remarkably similar to those of the second-term, chastened-by-reality George W. Bush. Indeed, anti-war Democrats groaned when the President, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, referred to “evil in the world” and hailed America’s willingness to use force abroad over the past six decades as an essential component of global security. The neoconservatives cheered.

Literally, you can condense the pile of manure and twisting in this Time article’s opening statement into: Blame Bush for Obama having to do more of the same! The rest of the article is replete with more excuse making for why Obama is now forced to not just follow Bush policies, but expand on the ones that irked the left the most when Bush was doing them. From Iraq – which we have now won despite the stupid left’s enormous campaign to declare it a loss (and accompanying actions to make it so) - to Afghanistan, which the Obama administration labeled the only “just war” right before it found itself desperately seeking for excuses to cut & run (like I predicted Afghanistan was just an excuse for the anti-US crowd to hide behind while attacking the Iraqi war, and despite all the blather would be abandoned just as quick as they could as the idiotic authors pathetic attempt to actually make the case for less action in Afghanistan clearly proves), the Obama Administration is doing more of the same that Bush did. In fact Obama is now realizing that despite his most fervent desire to bail on Afghanistan, that doing so will have consequences that will definitely affect his desire for a second term in office. I find the lack of a mention of the situation with Pakistan quite telling too.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Why have we not gotten more of this? Seriously. Our media and the leftists and their PC society are going to get more of us killed. This is unbelievable stuff.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Looks like the terrorists that killed 3000 of us on 9/11/2009 are just as excited as the radical America hating left is about their opportunity to spout their views of the evils of our great nation.

NEW YORK (AP) - The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday. Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but “would explain what happened and why they did it.”
The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Ali and four other men accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. will face a civilian federal trial just blocks from the site of the destroyed World Trade Center.

Sure makes Holder’s choice of this venue very obvious now. It is a bone thrown out those that like them think it is America’s fault for being or doing whatever they don’t like. All the usual Bush and America hating turds can rejoice in the crap these idiots will spout and secretly, or not in many cases, nod in agreement. Of course, not even the Obama people are so stupid to believe that these people should be able to go free. That’s why Holder has promised they will be found guilty. BTW, if that claim by Holder is not a clear indication of a rigged trial and a huge problem with our justice system, I don’t know what is.

Critics of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try the men in a New York City civilian courthouse have warned that the trial would provide the defendants with a propaganda platform.

And also the losers that agree with them. That’s how this should read. But it won’t. We all know it, but we will not say it out loud. Need to give these shlobs something to feel good about considering they are front and center for the destruction their kind of thinking is wreaking on our country these days.

The attorney general said he does not believe holding the trial in New York - at a federal courthouse that has seen a number of high-profile terrorism trials in recent decades - will increase the risk of terror attacks there.

Doesn’t matter that Osama said he targeted new York for this very kind of stuff. Watch these idiots blame Bush for this too.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Well it looks like Holder has decided to bring the terrorists behind the 9-11 attack to justice in a US courtand people already are pointing out the politics and stupidity of this move. I watched Holder get lobbed a bunch of softball questions while working out at the gym this AM and simply could not believe the crap he was saying. First off, I was baffled how he talked about bringing them to justice and having a fair and impartial trial, only to then assure the mouthpieces playing at reporting that expressed the concern that trying war criminals (my words not theirs) in a civilian court could see them getting off, that he was certain they would be found guilty.

Of course Holder avoided answering what they would be tried for and kept mouthing off that he was going to ask for the death penalty. But in the end there was no clear charges mentioned, and that was obviously on purpose. And the obvious thing to me here is that this is all a meaningless but dangerous political act of contrition intended to appease the left, and it shows. Obama, have no doubt that even though Holder is doing the talking that Obama is pulling the strings, is going to give the left that circus to paint America as the bad guy he promised. I wonder if they no longer feel this sort of stuff makes terrorists like they used to tell us back when Bush was in charge and we tried to fight these terrorists.

Also, what nobody also asked was how long this Kabuki dance would take to play out. Considering the back and forth that is sure to follow between the lawyers defending these scumbags and the Justice Department, it could take a decade or more before these trails happen. In the mean time Obama and Holder are not just (hopefully) likely to be long gone, but they score cheap political points by claiming they brought these terrorists to trail even if they are going to be locked away for another decade or more, put us all at in danger. Remember that Bin Laden pointed out the reason he chose the Twin Towers was that he wanted to amongst other things punish us for trying the other bearded camel humper that tried to blow the place up in 1993. I wonder if these Ivy league geniuses know that or simply don’t care?

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Talk about having the country with the greatest support for terrorism getting a little of their own medicine. In an act that I am sure is Ironic to most of us but likely got missed by the Iranian monsters oppressing the people of Iran, we get this tid-bit:

TEHRAN (Reuters) – A suicide bomber killed six senior Revolutionary Guards commanders and 23 other people on Sunday in one of the boldest attacks on Iran’s most powerful military institution. The attack, in the country’s turbulent southeast, came as Iranian officials were to meet Western counterparts for a second round of negotiations in Vienna on Monday intended to help resolve a standoff with the West about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

State media said a local rebel group called Jundollah (God’s soldiers) claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest on the elite Revolutionary Guards in recent years, which also wounded another 28 people at a meeting of tribal chiefs. “Rigi’s terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack,” said state television, referring to Abdolmalek Rigi, leader of Jundollah which is linked by some analysts to the Taliban in neighboring Pakistan. The Guards themselves accused “foreign elements” linked to the United States of involvement. Tehran accuses the United States of backing Jundollah to create instability in the country, a charge that Washington denies.

What’s hilarious is that the blame the current panty-waste do nothing cowards in DC for the attack, be it directly or indirectly, after these crooks in DC removed all aid for Iranian dissidents in the hopes of kissing up to these evil men! If anything these Sunnis are going to be backed by Saudi Arabia, where Sunnis are in the majority, but Iran is not ready to blame them yet it looks like.

I guess the mullocracy is still brutally oppressing, but the people are using some of the mullah’s own tactics against them now.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Here we go again. Another bunch of idiots is setting us up to lose another war, while pretending to want to spare innocents. As usual, I am certain this stuff will not blow up in our faces:

KABUL — The top U.S. general in Afghanistan will soon formally order U.S. and NATO forces to break away from fights with militants hiding in Afghan houses so the battles do not kill civilians, a U.S. official said Monday. The order would be one of the strongest measures taken by a U.S. commander to protect Afghan civilians in battle. American commanders say such deaths hurt their mission because they turn average Afghans against the government and U.S. and NATO forces. Civilian casualties are a major source of friction between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the U.S. The U.N. says U.S., NATO and Afghan forces killed 829 civilians in the Afghan war last year.

If I was one of the terrorist commanders/planners, I would just order my people to drag some “innocent civilians” into a building somewhere near American troops, blow the place up, while making sure the scene looked as gruesome as possible, get some MSM reporters that are always ready to blame America for anything to come give this “massacre” some prime time and front page exposure, and presto: instant scandal that more likely than not will make the fighting for the troops even harder.. Do this a few times, and the left will demand we pull the troops out of Afghanistan (which might be part of the plan from the get go) to stop them from committing “atrocities”. We saw it in Iraq. That one of their own is in charge will not matter. They will see it as them legitimizing Obama instead of him handing the US another defeat.

I have already had this argument over a dozen times with many lefty idiots. Yet it bears repeating: war is supposed to be an ugly thing. Every time western nations have made new rules, to clean war up and protect the “innocent”, they have encouraged those innocents to be put into harm’s way. Every single time. No exceptions. All rules like this do is prolong the fighting and make sure we end up with as many innocents as possible in harm’s way. And to exacerbate the problem, we need to remember that the enemy we are currently fighting in Afghanistan does not place any value on human life, often not even their own. Because we do value innocent’s lives we should avoid any and all policy, like this one, that reduces human lives to just another tool for the enemy to use.

I guarantee you that if these innocent bystanders could not be used as propaganda fodder, that these rules would not be needed. In fact the enemy would not try to use them as shields because it would not help them avoid a beat down. Please do not think I want or enjoy innocents dying, but we need to use basic psychology when making this kind of decision. Claiming you want to protect innocents might play well in the press, but when your supposed ROE changes make it a lot more likely innocents will be put in harm’s way, you are not really helping out. Maybe if war was brutal and ugly again, a lot less people would want it so much. And the people running Afghanistan right now and complaining about civilian casualties – practically always civilians that were put in harms way for the propaganda value - ought to know that.

Cross posted at Wasting time with Alex

Thursday, June 04, 2009

By now the usual MSM propaganda outlets are all fawning over that great speech Obama gave in Cairo. As is usual with liberals, Obama bad mouthed the US, kissed corrupt people’s arses at every opportunity, and basically left every muslim believing the US is now run by the second incarnation of Jimmy Carter. This was the best analysis of the speech I have seen yet:

But if world peace is attained by complimenting those on the other side into submission, he made some serious progress. Obama really buttered them up in Cairo. He thanked them for everything from algebra to the pen, though he curiously failed to mention that they often throw people in prison for using it. He even went so far as to tell the audience that he considers “it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” Wow. That won’t be the last time you hear that line.

And anyway, where exactly is that in the oath of office he took? And if talking is going to resolve all the problems in the world, Obama got a good bit of that out of the way today. He talked and talked and talked and talked. And then kept talking. Vacillating between a lecture-some professor and a talk show therapist, Obama started out numbering the grave and important issues he wanted to discuss. After a half-dozen, he junked the whole numbering system. Or, lost count. The problem with talking so much is that you eventually just start babbling and saying a bunch of stuff that makes no sense.

As I already said: this sounded like the usual angst & guilt ridden liberal attempt to curry favor with the usual evil bastards by playing the repentant and ashamed victim of your country’s actions. He prostrated himself for these thugs, blaming the US again for all their ills, while never pointing out the fact that their miserable and oppressive leadership and religious fanatical fight to drag their societies back to the 13the century, is the prominent problem, and what has made them such shitholes in the first place. I swear I wish I could understand this liberal need to continuously denigrate their country and ask forgiveness from thugs. Must be some dementia related to that victim mentality that is the center of their ideology and their deep seeded hatred of America. I mean, did the people that wrote this speech think how idiotic having Obama complain about the fact America once had slaves – the guy’s relative and black parent is from Kenya for Christ sake - in a part of the world where the only religion tolerated still allows slavery would come across to people that actually have a clue?

And WTF was this absolutely idiotic comment that any world order that elevates one nation over another will fail? I swear we should force all these idiotic liberals, especially the women, to live for a year in one of these muslim countries whose leadership Obama was so busy kissing ass for, and then see how they feel about this idiotic statement. Do these people actually know how hard it is to live and how cheap life is in ¾ of the countries on this world? This kind of idiocy can only be cultivated in and believed by people that have no real life experience of any kind. Do these leftists even understand how muslims think? Showing them weakness will not make them want to play nice, it will only validate their beliefs that this is the time to strike.

Anyway, how did the locals react? Well they hated on him despite his willingness to bend over for them. And Osama himself pointed out that these were empty words. Kill the Crusader & the Jew! Who would blame them for pointing out that America is weak and it’s their time to go for broke?

Cross posted at Wasting time with Alex.

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

It looks like Israel is responding to Iran’s latest threats against anyone trying to halt their quest for the bomb by making sure Iran understands Israel is playing for keeps.

“There is no doubt that the drill will teach us additional lessons on Israel’s preparedness for emergencies,” he said. “We are preparing ourselves for the most severe incident.”

That’s code for the fact that the people of Israel are getting ready and can deal with and survive any conventional attack that follows Iran’s tantrum when the state of Israel stops them from going nuclear. While this can get ugly, a nuke going off in Israel will be much worse. Israel understands that it can not gamble about the issue of Iran getting nukes. I would not either. Something that the current occupants of the WH seem to not care much about. This is do or die for them…

Cross Posted at Wasting time with Alex. Please remember that it is also donating time.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Behold, your wonderful United Nations:

The U.N.’s top human-rights body approved a proposal by Muslims nations Thursday urging passage of laws around the world to protect religion from criticism.

The proposal put forward by Pakistan on behalf of Islamic countries — with the backing of Belarus and Venezuela — had drawn strong criticism from free-speech campaigners and liberal democracies.

Hmmm.  Supported by Hugo the Horrible and Russia’s sock puppet.  Why am I not surprised?

The resolution urges states to provide “protection against acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions and incitement to religious hatred in general.”

“Defamation of religions is the cause that leads to incitement to hatred, discrimination and violence toward their followers,” Pakistan’s ambassador Zamir Akram said.

“It is important to deal with the cause, rather than with the effects alone,” he said.

Hold the phone, Zamir.  It is not the defamation that causes violence, it’s the extreme version of the religion you guys are peddling.  You don’t see Christians rioting when someone says Jesus didn’t exist.  Well, not anymore.  You don’t see Jews killing people when someone mocks kosher laws.  The Mormons are the butt of a million jokes but don’t crap their pants over it.  Hell, even Scientologists just resort to suing the daylight out of everyone.

It seems to me that someone secure in their religious beliefs would be immune from criticism, would let it just wash off them and respond with steady, unwavering faith.  It is the fundamentalist—of any faith—who explodes in violence at any perceived heresy.

You can’t deal with the “cause” and not the “effect” of violence because the fundamentalism is the cause.  The fundamentalists will always find something to completely lose their minds over.  Today it’s criticism, tomorrow it’s the teaching of evolution, the next day it’s the existence of faiths besides their own.  Blaming religious critics for the ensuing violence would be like blaming the victim for ... oh, yeah, they already do blame the victim for rape.

Never mind.

Is there anyone out there who can, in the wake of this, still want to give the UN authority—such at the authority they are currently seeking over energy policy?

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Nice:

The book is called The Imam’s Daughter because “Hannah Shah” is just that: the daughter of an imam in one of the tight-knit Deobandi Muslim Pakistani communities in the north of England. Her father emigrated to this country from rural Pakistan some time in the 1960s and is, apparently, a highly respected local figure.

He is also an incestuous child abuser, repeatedly raping his daughter from the age of five until she was 15, ostensibly as part of her punishment for being “disobedient”. At the age of 16 she fled her family to avoid the forced marriage they had planned for her in Pakistan. A much, much greater affront to “honour” in her family’s eyes, however, was the fact that she then became a Christian – an apostate. The Koran is explicit that apostasy is punishable by death; thus it was that her father the imam led a 40-strong gang – in the middle of a British city – to find and kill her.

...

Hannah’s description in the book of the moment when her “community” discovered the “safe” home where she had fled after becoming an apostate is terrifying. A mob with her father at its head pounded and hammered at the door as she cowered upstairs hoping she could not be seen or heard. She heard her father shout through the letter box: “Filthy traitor! Betrayer of your faith! Cursed traitor! We’re going to rip your throat out! We’ll burn you alive!”

Does she still believe they would have killed her? “Yes, without a doubt. They had hammers and knives and axes.”

Why didn’t you call the police after-wards? “First, I didn’t think the police would believe me. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen in this country – or that’s what they’d think. Second, I didn’t believe I would get help or protection from the authorities.”

Hannah had good reason for this doubt. When, at school, she had finally summoned the courage to tell a teacher that her father had been beating her (she couldn’t bring herself to reveal the sexual abuse), the social services sent out a social worker from her own community. He chose not to believe Hannah and, in effect, shopped her to her father, who gave her the most brutal beating of her life. When she later confronted the social worker, he said: “It’s not right to betray your community.”

Hannah blames what is sometimes called political correctness for this debacle: “My teachers had thought they were doing the right thing, they thought it showed ‘cultural sensitivity’ by bringing in someone from my own community to ‘help’, but it was the worst thing they could have done to me. This happens a lot.”

This wasn’t in Pakistan or East Weirdbeard, Afghanistan.  This happened in Britain, where cultural sensitivity has run so badly amuck that it’s considered insensitive to stop fathers from raping and killing their children.  This is where a judge said that Muslims should be judged under sharia rather than civil law.

Read the whole thing.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Okay, this is fucking comedy gold. 

The founder of an Islamic television station in upstate New York aimed at countering Muslim stereotypes has confessed to beheading his wife, authorities said.

Yeah, because beheading isn’t a Muslim stereotype or anything.  But wait, there’s more!

Muzzammil Hassan was charged with second-degree murder after police found the decapitated body of his wife, Aasiya Hassan, at the Bridges TV station in the Buffalo suburb of Orchard Park, said Andrew Benz, Orchard Park’s police chief.

Hassan was arrested Thursday.

His wife filed for divorce January 6, and police had responded to several domestic violence calls at the couple’s home, Benz said.

Well, his wife filed for divorce.  Surely the Koran explicitly forbids such scandalous and unseemly behavior, right?

He had two children, 4 and 6, with his wife. He had two other children, 17 and 18, from his previous marriage.

Ah, so divorce is okay, except when the person doing the filing is a female who is being beaten by her husband.  Here’s the kicker.

He launched Bridges TV, billed as the first English-language cable channel targeting Muslims inside the United States, in 2004. At the time, Hassan said he hoped the network would balance negative portrayals of Muslims following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

A) Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya! We’ve got to build bridges in the wake of 9/11, to show America that Muslims aren’t the bloodthirsty religious fanatics that they think we are!

B) “What?  You’re divorcing me?  You fucking whore!  Jezebel!  You will emasculate me in front of my Arab peers!  I will be a laughingstock!  Let me go and grab the sword from the bedroom closet.  In Allah’s name I strike at thee!”

Yeah, let’s build bridges.  Let the healing begin.  Islam is, after all, the Religion of Peace™.  (And beheading.)

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Ah, the internet age:

A video scandal has hit the Iranian Internet scene. Like many online scandals in the West, it involves a model. Not Paris Hilton, but a supposed model of virtue: a cleric.

In the video—for weeks voted the top story on Balatarin.com (an Iranian version of Digg.com)—a robed cleric is caught on a hidden camera in a private room. He walks to the door to let a chador-clad woman enter.

“Nobody saw you come in, did they?” he asks her lightheartedly. As she removes her chador, he continues in the same tone: “Want to do some Nasnas?”

Iranians know Nasnas as a mythological monster. What the cleric means by “do some Nasnas” is clarified by what happens next in the clip. Americans have a similar expression: the beast with two backs.

The cleric was apparently a member of the government-run Friday Prayers Committee in Hamadan province. Semi-official news sites tried to downplay the impact of the video, which leaked out of an Intelligence Ministry investigation. But their reports did acknowledge that the man involved was a married cleric, and that the video depicts the consummation of an unlawful affair.

“One thing we had never seen before was a cleric’s naked butt,” commented one young Iranian below the online video clip. “Thanks to the Internet, that is no longer impossible!”

There is a brief sobering note:

Many remember how last year—ironically in the same province of Hamadan—a medical student was arrested by the “Morality Patrol” for sitting with her fiancé in a public park. When her family was finally allowed to visit her 48 hours later, they were asked to remove her lifeless body. Police claimed she had hanged herself in the temporary detention centre, and the state blocked an investigation by warning that any discussion “would only give the enemy’s propagandists their much-needed opportunity to attack us.”

Scandals like this expose fundamentalists for what they are.  They are not religious visionaries.  They are thugs, plain and simple.  They don’t believe even half the shit they’re peddling.

One of the many things that is going to rip fundamentalist Islam apart is that sticking to the supposed tenets is impossible for any human being with his or her gonads intact.  We are going to see more and more of these clerics failing to live up to their unreasonable expectations.  The communists could get away with living in luxury while their people starved because no one knew about it.  The internet age will prevent Islamists from similar cover-ups.

Update: I just realized this was previously posted by WVR.  I knew I’d read it somewhere.  So, um, yeah.  What he said.

Monday, December 01, 2008

I believe the UN has its uses.  It’s work on health issues is good (it did wipe out smallpox after all).  It gives half-wit countries a venue in which to say nasty things about the country that’s funding their battles against AIDS and loaning them money.  That’s an improvement over doing nasty things to us.

But as a serious institution for solving the world’s problem, it’s just a bad joke:

Islamic countries Monday won United Nations backing for an anti-blasphemy measure Canada and other Western critics say risks being used to limit freedom of speech.

Combating Defamation of Religions passed 85-50 with 42 abstentions in a key UN General Assembly committee, and will enter into the international record after an expected rubber stamp by the plenary later in the year.

But while the draft’s sponsors say it and earlier similar measures are aimed at preventing violence against worshippers regardless of religion, religious tolerance advocates warn the resolutions are being accumulated for a more sinister goal.

...

Passage of the resolution is part of a 10-year action plan the 57-state Organization of Islamic Conference launched in 2005 to ensure “renaissance” of the “Muslim Ummah” or community.

While the current resolution is non-binding, Pakistan’s Ambassador Masood Khan reminded the UN’s Human Rights Council this year that the OIC ultimately seeks a “new instrument or convention” on the issue. Such a measure would impose its terms on signatory states

As the article points out, you can’t accuse someone of “defaming” religion unless you accept its tenets as absolute truth.  You would not be able to even question anyone’s belief under such a rule without risking criminal charges.

Actually, after typing that, I’m surprised that the smoldering remnant of the GOP isn’t getting behind this idea.