August 24, 2010
And Oh, By The Way, Imam Rauf Is a Despicable Apologist For Islamist Tyranny And Must Demonstrate Tolerance
— Ace I like this piece an awful lot. Sure, he knocks some on the right for engaging in rhetoric he finds too ugly to be creditable, but darn it if he doesn't wind up coming to -- or at least guardedly approaching -- some of the same concerns we have.
Often it is like this -- someone can agree with you in principle but be put off by your tone. Even so, it's good to have a Grade-A sophisticate like Hitchens with his authoritative baritone and plummy Oxbridge accent sounding most of the right notes, to reach those who might otherwise just give in to the easy paradigm of liberals that this is about nothing but "hate."
I do not find myself reassured by the fact that Imam Rauf publicly endorses the most extreme and repressive version of Muslim theocracy. The letterhead of the statement, incidentally, describes him as the Cordoba Initiative's "Founder and Visionary." Why does that not delight me, either?Emboldened by the crass nature of the opposition to the center, its defenders have started to talk as if it represented no problem at all and as if the question were solely one of religious tolerance. It would be nice if this were true. But tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism. We are wrong to talk as if the only subject was that of terrorism. As Western Europe has already found to its cost, local Muslim leaders have a habit, once they feel strong enough, of making demands of the most intolerant kind. Sometimes it will be calls for censorship of anything "offensive" to Islam. Sometimes it will be demands for sexual segregation in schools and swimming pools. The script is becoming a very familiar one. And those who make such demands are of course usually quite careful to avoid any association with violence. They merely hint that, if their demands are not taken seriously, there just might be a teeny smidgeon of violence from some other unnamed quarter Â…
As for the gorgeous mosaic of religious pluralism, it's easy enough to find mosque Web sites and DVDs that peddle the most disgusting attacks on Jews, Hindus, Christians, unbelievers, and other Muslims—to say nothing of insane diatribes about women and homosexuals. This is why the fake term Islamophobia is so dangerous: It insinuates that any reservations about Islam must ipso facto be "phobic." A phobia is an irrational fear or dislike. Islamic preaching very often manifests precisely this feature, which is why suspicion of it is by no means irrational.
A useful tonic to the anger I feel about this is this article by the NYT about man-in-the-street interviews with Muslims, most of whom sound pretty darn reasonable and tolerant.
Malik Nadeem Abid, an insurance agent whose storefront window on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn framed a steady stream of men walking to pray at the mosque next door, said he was “not a big fan” of the decision by the Cordoba Initiative, a Muslim group that promotes interfaith cooperation, to build the center near ground zero.“It was not a politically smart move, from my perspective,” said Mr. Abid, 45. “No one wants a center in downtown Manhattan that stands as a permanent fixture of this terrible tension.”
Yet the decision has been made, he said, “and we can’t let the loudest voices dictate what happens.” Still, he added, if the center were built 5 or 10 blocks away, as some people have proposed, “I don’t think it would matter very much.”
That kind of ambivalence over the downtown project, some said, was partly the point: Muslims in America embody the same diversity as everyone else.
“I see both sides,” said A. Chowdhry, 27. She lives in Jackson Heights, Queens, and teaches in a New Jersey grade school. “As Americans, ground zero is our hallowed ground, too. But it pains me to be excluded from this part of being American.”
A big problem I have is with Islamic leaders, their clerics -- especially those like Rauf who continue to jet-set around and meet with clerics in countries where the "moderate" position is to deny Muslims were involved in 9/11 at all (and the less moderate position is to confess that, and then praise them).
Men such as Rauf continue to indulge in dishonest double-speak, blessed by their religion, they say, by the doctrine of taqiyya. There is no "outreach" to troublesome Muslims being practiced by Rauf -- he does not criticize them, or reject their support for terrorism, or demand they reform. For them, he only offers justification for their murderous resentment -- the US has killed more Muslims than Al Qaeda; the US is an accessory to the crime -- i.e., a legally-chargeable guilty party -- of 9/11.
His "outreach" extends in one direction only, to the West, where he asks for tolerance and speaks pretty words about peace and the virtues of Islam. Which is nice, but we have plenty of that already with daily government-approved official pronouncements about Islam being a "religion of peace" and the constant reminder that the "great majority" of Muslims do not support terrorism. (Perhaps true, but I'd like to focus a bit more on the 30-40% who do.)
Where is the outreach in the other direction? He instructs us that we should not blame all Muslims for the terrorist murders committed by some -- but where is the pointed statement to terrorist murders that infidels are not to be blamed for the collective grievances of aggressive, insecure Islamists, and, even if were to be blamed, it would be just terrific and super-appreciated if this blame did not come in the form of ball-bearing-studded car bombs?
And this "outreach" continues apace, where we are all told that Muslims are not responsible for terrorism, even (especially?) including those Muslims who actually are responsible for terrorism. The responsibility for such murders lay, as it always does, upon the West; the victims of Muslim fury, as always, were complicit -- nay, wholly responsible -- for their own murders.
This is "outreach." This the sort of "moderate" we actually pay good money to jet to Indonesia and Malaysia to encourage Muslims to stop committing acts of terrorism -- a man who refuses to engage in the "politics" (as he terms it) of saying that murder is a moral crime.
And this, of course, is the "founder and visionary" behind the Ground Zero Mosque, and the man whose goodwill and peaceableness we are supposed to accept unquestioningly, and therefore, of course, accept unquestioningly that the motive behind the mosque is good and pure.
It's odd -- Rauf will tell us that Muslims are not terrorists, again and again, but when asked if a provably terrorist organization -- Hamas -- is terrorist, he suddenly loses all interest in discussing "politics." I would find his reassurances about most Muslims not being terrorists (which is of course true) more satisfying if, confronted with actual Muslim terrorists, he would indulge me in a bit of "politics" and condemn them as the killers they are.
Note that Rauf could considerably help his own cause by delivering an unambiguous condemnation of terrorism, unadorned by all the nasty ornaments of American culpability. He doesn't do that -- and I read quite a bit into that.
Instead, I am only told by Daisy Khan that my saying mean things about Muslims, and agitating in what, at the end of the day, is a zoning dispute, constitutes the most hateful and contemptible actions imaginable.
And yet no one ever says that Muslims should be killed simply for disagreeing with us or taking provocative actions -- well, the occasional nutter pops off, but he's roundly condemned by more American Americans. But that is precisely what is said in radical -- and, actually, I suspect, rather ordinary -- mosques every day.
If this is Rauf's and Khan's idea of the hierarchy of evils -- my insults a greater evil than their correligionists' car-bombs and terror rockets -- then they stand first and foremost in, as they say, "tainting Islam as a cult of murder."
The "outreach" I get from Rauf is that the major problem with Muslim terrorism is that I'm making too big a deal about it and ought to accept my own culpability for it, and if I'm getting that message of "outreach," I am quite certain the 30-40% of the world Muslim population we are most acutely concerned with is getting that message of "outreach" as well.
America is culpable in one manner: By our habit of apologism for third-world evil and tolerating the intolerable, making excuses for murder, we are in effect preventing the necessary argument that must be had within Islam. Terror and tribalistic hatred must be reformed out of it, and, just as with the housing market, we are propping up a bad system, delaying a necessary reckoning, by continuing to indulge in this happy-happy joy-joy apologism for Islamist evil.
Rauf continues his "outreach" to terrorists (by which we mean: tacit support for and moral encouragement of) because we haven't yet insisted that he choose, once and finally, between peace and war, forgiveness and hatred, decency and murder.
We allow him to play this vile game, and by doing so, we are showing tolerance -- tolerance for murderers. And it should be little surprise then that the murders we are tolerating are continuing apace.
We have taken the ultimate step in defining deviancy down: We now pretend that mass murder is an understandable expression of Islamist rage, something we are just as responsible for as they (or more so), and little wonder then that the Islamist murderers take us at our word.
If you give someone moral license to kill you, you shouldn't be surprised if he gets the crazy idea you've given him actual license to kill you.
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— Russ from Winterset Maybe some of you have already heard that Kim Lehman, one of the Iowa members of the Republican National Committee, used her twitter account to accuse President Obama of admitting to being a Muslim in his 2009 Cairo speech.
That's a great piece of political ammo to use against the Democrats this November. It's a pity that it's not true.
Kim Lehman jumped to conclusions, and when she was called on her tweet after the fact, she totally punted an explanation. Does Barack Obama have Muslim sympathies? From a human standpoint, I would HOPE so. He was raised in a Muslim country by a Muslim stepfather, and he attended a Muslim school during his impressionable youth. I submit to you that any person who doesn't have some sympathy for Muslims after this level of immersion in their culture is a freakin' psychopath; and the thought of a psychopath with nuclear launch codes is a wee bit unsettling. With all that being said, it's one hell of a jump to conclude that Barack Obama IS a Muslim, practicing or not. I'm not in possession of the full text of his Cairo speech, but I assure you that if Obama had come out and said "Yeah, I'm one of you. Hot Salami Bacon, my bruddas!" at this event, we sure as hell would have heard about it. Not just from the small contingent of right-wing press that are still allowed to practice their craft, but from the press in the Muslim world. Do you think that the Muslim world could have kept quiet about this admission of his Super Sekrit Status as a Muslim? Hell no, asking them to remain quiet about this sort of thing would be like asking a 17-year old Ace to keep his jello-pit threeway with the Prom Queen AND the Head Cheerleader under wraps: When you've just had The Greatest Day of Your Life, it's hard to keep from sharing the news with everyone you meet. And if there's one thing that the professional gay lobby and the Muslim world have in common, it's the willingness to claim ANY public figure as One of Their Own if there's even the slightest hint of sympathies.
Is Obama a weak-kneed appeaser where Muslims are concerned? That's not an unreasonable conclusion. It's sure as hell more accurate than saying you just KNOW that he's a Muslim because of the context of his speech. After all, Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler in the leadup to WW2, but to the best of my knowledge he's not known as a Nazi. Why not? Probably because he wasn't a Nazi.
But let's not limit this analysis to human nature and deductive reasoning. I'm "Russ from Winterset", and since Winterset is located in Iowa, let's delve into some reasons why I consider Kim Lehman to be a Source of Dubious Merit. more...
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— DrewM Oof.
Sales of previously occupied homes plunged last month to the lowest level in 15 years, despite the lowest mortgage rates in decades and bargain prices in many areas.July's sales fell by more than 27 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. It was the largest monthly drop on records dating back to 1968, and sharp declines were recorded in all regions of the country.
Sales were particularly weak among homes priced in the lower to middle ranges. For example, in the Midwest, homes priced between $100,000 and $250,000 tumbled nearly 47 percent.
Robert Samuelson had a good rundown of the problems in the housing market yesterday. Naturally it boils down in good measure to idiotic government policies.
The irony is that, in failure, the GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie MAC) have become more important than ever. Private lenders, which once regarded a mortgage secured by a home as a highly safe investment, now see it as highly risky. Few new mortgages are made without government guarantees. The GSEs continue to operate and, along with other government agencies, guaranteed about 95 percent of new mortgages made in 2009, reports Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry newsletter. Since 1990, the government guarantee share had fluctuated between 30 and 50 percent.This means that sudden withdrawals of support might deepen housing's depression. Economists Phillip Swagel of Georgetown University and Donald Marron of the Tax Policy Center, among others, have made sensible proposals to scale back Fannie and Freddie. But done too quickly, they could backfire.
"This is not a good time to make permanent solutions for housing," says Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance. The single-minded promotion of homeownership failed and, paradoxically, undermined the American dream. It contributed to the housing "bubble" and favors housing investment over new industries and technologies. But to end it, we need to make haste slowly.
So the government tries to level the playing field and make it fairer for people to have access to homes they can't afford and they wind up screwing it up for everyone...socializing misery.
At least we've learned our lesson and would never expand government into something as basic and important as health care. Oh, right.
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Another Obama End Run Around Congress Halted By the Courts
— Gabriel Malor We've talked before about President Obama's tendency to use an expansive (read: lawless) interpretation of executive powers to avoid Congressional commands. That tendency was highlighted this summer when the courts had to step in and block the Obama Administration's arbitrary and capricious oil drilling moratorium. A few weeks later, a court blocked the Obama Administration's unlawful attempt to end the Yucca Mountain project over Congress' express wishes.
Yesterday, another court blocked the Obama Administration from funding embryonic stem cell research that requires the destruction of human embryos. Here's the decision (PDF) (which explained the stem cell debate with a lot more clarity than I've seen elsewhere).
In short, every year as part of the Health and Human Services appropriation Congress passes an amendment that prohibits, among other things, "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero."
That didn't stop Obama's HHS from issuing new "guidelines" that trample on Congress' yearly amendment prohibiting research in which an embryo is destroyed. So yesterday, a district court judge issued an injunction to put a stop to the President's end run around Congress:
In sum, plaintiffs have demonstrated a strong likelihood of success on the merits. The Dickey-Wicker Amendment is unambiguous. It prohibits research in which a human embryo is destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subject to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed under applicable regulations. The Guidelines violate that prohibition by allowing federal funding of ESC research because ESC research depends up on the destruction of a human embryo.
Of course, liberals are now feigning shock in the papers:
The ruling came as a shock to scientists at the National Institutes of Health and at universities across the country, which had viewed the Obama administration’s new policy and the grants provided under it as settled law. Scientists scrambled Monday evening to assess the ruling’s immediate impact on their work.“I have had to tell everyone in my lab that when they feed their cells tomorrow morning, they better use media that has not been funded by the federal government,” said Dr. George Q. Daley, director of the stem cell transplantation program at Children’s Hospital Boston, referring to food given to cells. “This ruling means an immediate disruption of dozens of labs doing this work since the Obama administration made its order.”
Boo hoo. The President cannot just ignore Congress' express order that this activity is not to be funded. He can go back to the Hill and change the law, but he can't just pretend that his own radical departure from Congress' express wishes is "settled law."
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— Gabriel Malor
The Democratic Party
We can express our Faith without being attacked for it, because you know damn well we don't mean a blessed word of it.
Brand Dem poster submitted by Appeal2Heaven.
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August 23, 2010
— Maetenloch Welcome to the Monday.
A Tale of Two Movies
The 70's Star Trek Home Movie
Here's a super 8 version of Star Trek some kids made back in 1978. It was recently rediscovered, redubbed, and has become a YouTube favorite.
And here is Uganda's first action adventure movie, "Who Killed Capt. Alex?", produced this year:
The Ugandans may have 30 years of technological advances and a budget at least a 100 times larger on their side, but I think I would rather watch an hour of the kids' home brew Star Trek than their uh, cutting edge production. Although I would like to see a helicopter take out entire cities. more...
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— Ace Sometimes the Onion is funny.
Sometimes the Onion is cruel.
Sometimes the Onion in on the attack against a target despised by the right.
Sometimes the Onion is actually all three.
Stolen from Hot Air, this is just the most deadpan-deadly attack on Time Magazine possible. more...
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04:17 PM
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— Ace Over at Hot Air.
As I've mentioned, this is something I say when I want to break the ice with the ladies. And you can therefore see why I'm thigh-deep in pooter.
Video metaphor below. more...
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04:08 PM
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— Maetenloch Well thatÂ’s the takeaway from this Gallup poll that found that a majority of Americans (53%) have an unfavorable view of Islam.
(I donÂ’t quite get the Buddhism hate - can Richard Gere do that much harm?)
Of course this is enough to make all the bien pensants wring their hands over this supposed American Islamophobia and leads to lectures and covers like this.
The current narrative in the MSM is that after the 9/11 attacks Americans were so angry that they tarred all Muslims as terrorists and so the opposition to the Ground Zero mosque is merely another manifestation of this bigotry. But is this really true? I think not. more...
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02:16 PM
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— Ace The rebroadcast is on at 7.
The topic?
What else? Your racism.
. He has gone completely off the rails with his new theory that the Republicans are now preaching that Obama is a Muslim by not saying he isn't enough.
Thanks to JackStraw. Maybe I'll semi-live-blog it, not really that normal live-blog thing (too late for that).
"Semi-Live-Blog..." means I'm just in the comments, tossing out my typical crap.
AP Covers Dueling Protests at Ground Zero With Predictable Bias: They reported on all of our boorish guys, but somehow missed their communist Islamist anti-semite ranters.
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02:14 PM
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