Psyops. And maybe not just psy, either.

Recent tax filings reveal an Islamist group that claims to speak for millions of Muslims in America actually boasts just 1,700 members. So whose interests does it really represent?

There's been surprisingly little transparency about the financing of the top Muslim lobby in Washington — the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Until recently, few in the media have bothered to investigate.

Since spinning off from Hamas front group Islamic Association for Palestine in 1994, CAIR has maintained it's a "grass-roots organization" — a "Muslim NAACP" — supported by members who pay dues. It repeatedly has denied receiving foreign funding.

These claims are no longer operative, however, and mainstream media and politicians who cozy up to the group should take note.

Citing IRS records, the Washington Times reports that CAIR has suffered a whopping 90% decline in membership since 9/11. Its official number of members shrank to 1,700 last year from 29,000 in 2000. As a result, CAIR's annual income from dues sank to $59,000 from $733,000.

Yet over the same period, CAIR's revenues have bounded ahead, reaching $3 million last year. Meanwhile, it has managed to open 25 new chapters in major cities across the country.

So where's it getting its money?

Tax records show the group is relying on some two dozen deep-pocketed donors for support. Who are they? We don't know. By law, CAIR doesn't have to publicly disclose them, and they're blacked out on IRS disclosure forms.

But land records unearthed by Paul Sperry, author of "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington," show that exactly one year after 9/11 — as its dues were drying up — CAIR signed over the deed to its Washington headquarters to a United Arab Emirates-based foundation headed by the ruler of Dubai.

Sheikh Mohammed Al-Maktoum's foundation put up almost $1 million for the property, and recently pledged $50 million more to help CAIR build larger headquarters, replenish its legal war chest and fund a nationwide pro-Islam propaganda campaign.

The New York Times earlier this year confirmed that "wealthy Persian Gulf governments" — including the UAE and Saudi Arabia — were backing CAIR. "CAIR has raised some suspicion by accepting large donations from individuals or foundations closely identified with Arab governments," the story said.

We also know from federal court records that CAIR received startup cash from the Holy Land Foundation, which the government has shut down as another Hamas front. Several of its founders — including a senior CAIR official — go on trial next month in Texas for allegedly funneling millions to Hamas for suicide-bomb operations.

U.S. prosecutors have named CAIR as "unindicted co-conspirators" in the terror case.

Posted by: Ace at 11:40 AM | Comments (10)
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Our victory was short-lived. They're going to push the amnesty bill again, and this time they'll vote for it. The keys? A scheme to spend a paltry $4.4 billion on border security -- borrowed from the Treasury department, for some reason, rather than appropriated -- supposed "first," that is, immediately, and yet they're plotting to pass amnesty before a nickel of this money is actually spent on improving border security. No fence, no computer system finally up and running to track immigrants, no biometric ID cards, no employment-eligibility system operational, no end to sanctuary cities -- nothing. Just more promises.

How many times does it need to be said? Your promises count for nothing when you are merely promising to do what you already could be doing, but flatly refuse to do. The attitude continues to be John McCain's "I'll build the goddamned fence" only if forced to do so.

And the moment their precious amnesty passes -- when we no longer have any leverage or bargaining power -- they won't be so forced to do that which is clearly anathema to them. 1986 all over again -- except this time it's worse, because it won't be forgiven or forgotten.

They're determined to destroy the Republican Party. They really are.

The other thing they're doing is agreeing on a limited number of Republican enforcement-improving amendments to consider. These will almost all be voted down -- but amnesty-supporters like Mitch McConnell, who voted against cloture last time, will now vote for cloture (and thus final passage of the bill) after he gives his Republican colleagues a chance to have their common-sense amendments rejected.

I assumed that Republican Senators had finally "gotten it" -- that they really were opposing the substance of the amnesty bill, but used the unfairness of Harry Reid's one-week-to-consider-and-debate-an-enormous-transformational-amnesty-bill as a procedural pretext to vote against the bill. I was wrong -- they really were just voting against the perceived procedural unfairness of Reid's bull-rush, and were just tossing security-minded colleagues a bone. But the moment they schedule votes on those amendments -- and then promptly vote them all down -- they'll pass the goddamned amnesty.

One small plus: These bastards are going to have it on their records that they voted against common-sense security measures, sometimes two or three times. They're all going to have to vote in favor of giving amnesty and permanent legal status to chronic felons, for example.

Kaus is similarly "paranoid," as he terms it. Chambliss and Issacson, in his read (and mine too), aren't truly against the amnesty now -- they're still very much for it, they just want a fig-leaf of fake security cover for their pro-amnesty vote. And the pro-amnesty forces are going to give them just that -- cosmetic, utterly false "security" measures. Key quote from Paul Weyrich:

In all of the years I have been here I never have known when the establishment really wants something that the establishment cannot obtain it. And the establishment really wants this bill.

Yup. The establishment wants it, no matter what the public wants.

Pot-banging tantrum-throwing Senator Lindsey Graham now says this bill isn't about immigration at all, but about our very ability as a nation to pass piece of shit bills. I'm not sure I'm really sold on the importance of our ability to pass piece of shit bills, but for Lindsay Graham and the media, it's a critical test of the American experiment in democracy.

Fuck Jeff Jacoby: Brands all those who oppose amnesty-without-security as racists, likens border fence to Berlin Wall.

If It's Popular, Why Does It Need To Be Passed So Far Before The Election? From Kaus again:

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested to reporters that if the Senate does not act "within the next couple weeks" the bill could be dead for the 110th Congress.

"As long as we can get the bill back up within a very short period of time, there is no harm done," said Chertoff, who said that the Georgians' funding plan was still on the table. "What we can't afford to do is let this languish beyond that period of time."

If America has amnesty fever, it seems to me the bill could be scheduled right up against the 2008 elections, no? Given the supposed popularity it enjoys, that should pressure wavering Congressmen into voting for it! After all, they don't want to vote against such a vital and popular bill and then face "angry voters"!

63% of Public, Including 65% of Republicans, Support "Pathway To Citizehship!" Really? You sure that's not because the media typically asks if an illegal immigrant should be permitted, the same as anyone else, to apply for pemanent legal status, rather than asking them if they think that all illegal immigrants should be automatically be granted such status overnight?

Again: If this all is so damned popular, then I advise the amnesty coalition to take the vote right before the elections, when their political hand is the strongest.

No?

Not going to do that, huh?

I wonder why.

Posted by: Ace at 10:54 AM | Comments (87)
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Of course, at AOSHQ, 'Winners' is a relative term.

FIRST PLACE: The prolific Slublog, whose haiku-hammer was powerful and devastating, yet also tender and seeking.

So President Bush
I've got a few words for you
Quack quack quack quack quack

Ron Paul is the shit
No really, I mean the shit
Actual feces

Tears at the White House
And tears on the Senate floor
Gives me a chubby

What's that, RNC?
You want some of my money?
How's it feel to want?

Other winners after the jump. more...

Posted by: LauraW. at 10:35 AM | Comments (9)
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I posted this a few days ago, but it's all the rage now that Rush Limbaugh picked it up. So I'll post it again.

Thanks to dri this time.

More Gore: No big deal, but Bill Clinton speculates that Gore will enter the race if another candidate "fizzles."

Posted by: Ace at 10:22 AM | Comments (12)
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Half creepy, half silly commercial running on G4 right now:

It's an ad for this, which helps me not, because I don't know what "this" is. Some kind of viral marketing campaign designed to sell you... viral marketing, or something.

This article attempts, sorta, to explain it all, but I'm still puzzled. Apparently...

Square is the new round, haven't you heard? Attik is trying to get the word on the street with a combination of a prolific interactive site and a savvy guerilla marketing campaign for the 2008 Scion xB.

"Want2bSquare" is a visually stunning world of color and trap doors that invites the user to explore, play games and watch video in its Scion-inspired square universe.

Ah. The Toyota Scion. It's a campaign designed to raise awareness about Toyota's new very-squarish modeling on its Scions.

Congratulations, Toyota. You have successfully raised my awareness of your product, and made me absolutely terrified by it.

Posted by: Ace at 07:28 PM | Comments (46)
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After having denigrated her fellow conservatives (?) as bigots for opposing amnesty, Chavez returns to say maybe she went a bit too far -- she was just "blowing off steam" -- but then accuse Heather MacDonald and numerous others of anti-Latio hatred once again. Her piece is titled "The Company You Keep," an allusion to fellow-travelling with racists, and the subtitle is "In Search of Anti-Hispanic Hostility," a reference to William F. Buckley's (properly) accusatory essay "In Search of Anti-Semitism," which she herself notes in her article.

So she's saying she went too far -- right before re-accusing all who oppose her of anti-Hispanic animus anew.

Responses from NRO writers follow. Heather MacDonald's response starting on page 2 is the toughest and most interesting.

Also in line for a Chavez thrashing is the Centers for Disease Control, which reports that 48 percent of all Hispanic births in 2005 occurred outside of marriage, compared with 25 percent of white births and 16 percent of Asian births. Hispanic women have the highest unmarried birthrate in the country — over three times that of whites and Asians, and nearly one and a half times that of black women, according to the CDC. Every 1,000 unmarried Hispanic women bore 92 children in 2003 (the latest year for which data exist), compared with 28 children for every 1,000 unmarried white women, 22 for every 1,000 unmarried Asian women, and 66 for every 1,000 unmarried black women.

Conservatives have long decried the steady rise in American illegitimacy as a bellwether of social breakdown. The national illegitimacy rate and the white illegitimacy rate — both considerably lower than the Hispanic rate — are considered a dangerous portent for the future. But when it comes to Hispanic illegitimacy, Chavez tells us not to worry, because “most Hispanic children are being raised by two parents.” But so are most white children and most American children on average, without that fact diminishing justified concern over out-of-wedlock child-rearing. And the percentage of children born to U.S.-born Hispanics who are being raised by their actual parents — 56 percent, according to the March 2003 Current Population Survey — is not exactly cause for celebration.

...

To deny a Hispanic gang and crime problem simply defies reality. Chavez focuses exclusively on first-generation Mexicans to try to rebut my writing on Hispanic crime. But I myself have pointed out “the relatively low crime rate among immigrants.” I added, however, that “unless we can prevent immigrants from having children, a high level of immigration translates to increased levels of crime. Between the foreign-born generation and their American children, the incarceration rate of Mexican-Americans jumps more than eightfold, resulting in an incarceration rate that is 3.45 times higher than that of whites, according to an analysis of 2000 census data by the pro-immigrant Migration Policy Institute.”

It is hardly surprising that one of a particular ethnic extraction would hold fellow members of that ethnicity in high esteem. It is not criminal that such a person would seek to champion their own. Nor is it particularly blameworthy.

But it's absurd for Linda Chavez, simply because she has a sort of racist -- or at least race-based -- blood-affinity for fellow Hispanics, to demand that we share in her exuberance for her fellow Hispanics and shrug off massive economic, cultural, security, and law-enforcement concerns in order to join the fiesta.

Tens of thousands of Chinese are waiting for US Visas. Hundreds of thousands more would apply if we opened the doors to Chinese immigration. Millions might come if we simply put out word that no formal legal process would be necessary for immigrating to America, but rather any Chinese immigrant who managed to sneak into the country would be welcomed as de facto American with a formal amnesty and legalization on the way.

Linda Chavez, one should note, is not pushing for greater allowances for Chinese immigrants. Is she racist? Does she have some anti-Chinese hostility in her? Why does she push only the agenda of her own "race" (some question whether this term is applicable here, but as Chavez uses the concept, let's go with it) much like the KKK only seems to care about European Prostestant Americans?

And this goes double for Africans, whose continent, it seems, plumbs new depths of misery, privation, and senseless violence every month. Certainly we could find 12 million Africans who would like to legally come to America on a "pathway to citizenship." Why should their aspirations be ignored? Does Linda Chavez just not have a "high negro tolerance level"?

Laotians, Vietnamese, Burmese... even caucasians from the poorer quarters of New Europe. If our mission is merely to improve the lot of desperate, prosperity-hungry foreigners, we could do so fairly easily.

We could throw open the doors of citizenship to any group of the word's poor and desperate. And yet Linda Chavez agitates only for extending such a boon to one "race" -- her own. And yet we're the racists, despite the fact that our objections stem not from a hostility to any particular race but from a general reluctance to take responsbility for several dozen million more of the world's poor, uneducated, and low-skilled, especially given we haven't yet really taken care of our current cadre of the poor, uneducated, and low-skilled yet.

To hell with her. I think Ramsh Ponuru had it right the first time when he suggested, more or less, that she should be shunned. We oughtn't truck with such racists.

People who live in ethinic identity-politics houses should cast racist stones, Linda.

Posted by: Ace at 07:04 PM | Comments (72)
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After having denigrated her fellow conservatives (?) as bigots for opposing amnesty, Chavez returns to say maybe she went a bit too far -- she was just "blowing off steam" -- but then accuse Heather MacDonald and numerous others of anti-Latio hatred once again. Her piece is titled "The Company You Keep," an allusion to fellow-travelling with racists, and the subtitle is "In Search of Anti-Hispanic Hostility," a reference to William F. Buckley's (properly) accusatory essay "In Search of Anti-Semitism," which she herself notes in her article.

So she's saying she went too far -- right before re-accusing all who oppose her of anti-Hispanic animus anew.

Responses from NRO writers follow. Heather MacDonald's response starting on page 2 is the toughest and most interesting.

Also in line for a Chavez thrashing is the Centers for Disease Control, which reports that 48 percent of all Hispanic births in 2005 occurred outside of marriage, compared with 25 percent of white births and 16 percent of Asian births. Hispanic women have the highest unmarried birthrate in the country — over three times that of whites and Asians, and nearly one and a half times that of black women, according to the CDC. Every 1,000 unmarried Hispanic women bore 92 children in 2003 (the latest year for which data exist), compared with 28 children for every 1,000 unmarried white women, 22 for every 1,000 unmarried Asian women, and 66 for every 1,000 unmarried black women.

Conservatives have long decried the steady rise in American illegitimacy as a bellwether of social breakdown. The national illegitimacy rate and the white illegitimacy rate — both considerably lower than the Hispanic rate — are considered a dangerous portent for the future. But when it comes to Hispanic illegitimacy, Chavez tells us not to worry, because “most Hispanic children are being raised by two parents.” But so are most white children and most American children on average, without that fact diminishing justified concern over out-of-wedlock child-rearing. And the percentage of children born to U.S.-born Hispanics who are being raised by their actual parents — 56 percent, according to the March 2003 Current Population Survey — is not exactly cause for celebration.

...

To deny a Hispanic gang and crime problem simply defies reality. Chavez focuses exclusively on first-generation Mexicans to try to rebut my writing on Hispanic crime. But I myself have pointed out “the relatively low crime rate among immigrants.” I added, however, that “unless we can prevent immigrants from having children, a high level of immigration translates to increased levels of crime. Between the foreign-born generation and their American children, the incarceration rate of Mexican-Americans jumps more than eightfold, resulting in an incarceration rate that is 3.45 times higher than that of whites, according to an analysis of 2000 census data by the pro-immigrant Migration Policy Institute.”

It is hardly surprising that one of a particular ethnic extraction would hold fellow members of that ethnicity in high esteem. It is not criminal that such a person would seek to champion their own. Nor is it particularly blameworthy.

But it's absurd for Linda Chavez, simply because she has a sort of racist -- or at least race-based -- blood-affinity for fellow Hispanics, to demand that we share in her exuberance for her fellow Hispanics and shrug off massive economic, cultural, security, and law-enforcement concerns in order to join the fiesta.

Tens of thousands of Chinese are waiting for US Visas. Hundreds of thousands more would apply if we opened the doors to Chinese immigration. Millions might come if we simply put out word that no formal legal process would be necessary for immigrating to America, but rather any Chinese immigrant who managed to sneak into the country would be welcomed as de facto American with a formal amnesty and legalization on the way.

Linda Chavez, one should note, is not pushing for greater allowances for Chinese immigrants. Is she racist? Does she have some anti-Chinese hostility in her? Why does she push only the agenda of her own "race" (some question whether this term is applicable here, but as Chavez uses the concept, let's go with it) much like the KKK only seems to care about European Prostestant Americans?

And this goes double for Africans, whose continent, it seems, plumbs new depths of misery, privation, and senseless violence every month. Certainly we could find 12 million Africans who would like to legally come to America on a "pathway to citizenship." Why should their aspirations be ignored? Does Linda Chavez just not have a "high negro tolerance level"?

Laotians, Vietnamese, Burmese... even caucasians from the poorer quarters of New Europe. If our mission is merely to improve the lot of desperate, prosperity-hungry foreigners, we could do so fairly easily.

We could throw open the doors of citizenship to any group of the word's poor and desperate. And yet Linda Chavez agitates only for extending such a boon to one "race" -- her own. And yet we're the racists, despite the fact that our objections stem not from a hostility to any particular race but from a general reluctance to take responsbility for several dozen million more of the world's poor, uneducated, and low-skilled, especially given we haven't yet really taken care of our current cadre of the poor, uneducated, and low-skilled yet.

To hell with her. I think Ramsh Ponuru had it right the first time when he suggested, more or less, that she should be shunned. We oughtn't truck with such racists.

People who live in ethinic identity-politics houses should cast racist stones, Linda.

Posted by: Ace at 07:04 PM | Comments (72)
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Hyperpartisan lunatic Deb Frisch seems to be stalking the University of Oregon campus like a deranged left-wing Batman, looking for malefactors to punish.

Oregon Commentator caught her having a Battle of Crazy with an aggressive prosyletizing type.

Posted by: Ace at 05:52 PM | Comments (44)
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And David Obey threatens to stop all earmarks if Republicans continue making a fuss.

Ummm... your offer is accepted in principle.

I put the blame for this on President Bush. What a shock, I know. The fact of the matter is that these earmarks have no leglislative or legal force; they're stuck into the Congressional record and honored by the various agencies, adminstrations, and bureaucracies not because any binding law requires them to do so, but because they fear -- justifiably -- that if they do not keep Congress happy, Congress will slash their budgets.

Well, for one thing, again: Your offer is accepted in principle.

But President Bush could eliminate almost all earmark spending with a simple executive order stating that any earmark spending proposal not actually incorporated into a voted-upon spending bill will be presumptively dismissed and dishonored, the only exceptions being that if the agency, after concluding a lengthy and extensive vetting process, determines that the project is extremely important in economic and national security terms.

Currently anyone working at these agencies knows the path of least resistance is simply to give Congressmen their precious earmarks. That keeps the money flowing.

But Bush, with a simple executive order (he does control the executive branch of government, no matter how the media and Democratic Party would like to argue that point) can make approval of earmarks the path of high resistance, requiring an awful lot work by employees to show just cause for the earmark. Further, as these people are only authorizing this spending to protect their own jobs (less Congressional money = higher chance of layoffs or early retirements or firings), Bush can push back against this tendency as the tax-money-spenders' actual direct employer by laying down the law that those who thoughtlessly spend the public's money on unvetted, unlegislatively-approved projects will themselves be jeopardizing their employment.

Why won't he do this?

Meanwhile... David Boehner, previously not much of an earmark hawk, is ready to declare "war" on the Democratic Congress' pork frenzy.

Minority Leader John Boehner threatened Democratic leaders Tuesday, vowing to slow down legislative activities in the House until Democrats agree to open up earmarking policy so that lawmakers disclose their pet projects earlier in the bill-making process.

"Republicans today are going to declare war on our Democratic majority over these secret slush funds," Boehner told reporters on Capitol Hill.

Republicans are hoping to hold Democrats to an earlier promise to make earmark requests more transparent by revealing where earmarks are designated and which lawmaker is requesting them before spending bills reach the House floor. Democrats want to release that information during the conference committee process, well after the House votes for appropriations.

Boehner, R-Ohio, said he is upset over the change of heart, and Democrats need to "realize the errors of their ways."

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said Monday he would kill all pet projects if Republican leaders "demagogue" the issue. Obey said lawmakers had submitted more than 32,000 earmark requests this year.

It only took the Democrats five months to lower their approval below that of the GOP's approval rate before the 2006 elections.

Thanks, Nancy!

Posted by: Ace at 05:24 PM | Comments (26)
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A little bit, at least, if only in the negative, to knock down various theories and claims.

Having studiously missed out on this pop-culture phenomenon, I have no idea if this is actually link-worthy. I toss it out there just because I know there are a lot of Sopranos fans. Alas, I can't evaluate if this is interesting or not.

Posted by: Ace at 05:10 PM | Comments (6)
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