konane's Blog

Credit to FreeRepublic for heads up on this gem.

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http://www.underneathpolitics.com/story2twentyfive.html

Came in email this morning. 

Time for Fair Tax which totally eliminates all federal payroll taxes and allows you t bring home all of your paycheck. 

Prices drop because there are no embedded taxes and cost of compliance .... you pay the same for goods at checkout and you don't have to pay to have your taxes done by April 15th.

Best part is ILLEGALS ARE PAYING THEIR FAIR SHARE INTO THE TAX SYSTEM.   

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"What do Islamist terrorists want?

"The answer should be obvious, but it is not.

by Daniel Pipes

Source DanielPipes.org

"A generation ago, terrorists did make clear their wishes. Upon hijacking three airliners in September 1970, for example, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine demanded, with success, the release of Arab terrorists imprisoned in Britain, Switzerland, and West Germany. Upon attacking the B'nai B'rith headquarters and two other Washington, D.C. buildings in 1977, a Hanafi Muslim group demanded the canceling of a feature movie, Mohammad, Messenger of God," $750 (as reimbursement for a fine), the turning over of the five men who had massacred the Hanafi leader's family, plus the killer of Malcolm X.

Such "non-negotiable demands" led to wrenching hostage dramas and attendant policy dilemmas. "We will never negotiate with terrorists," the policymakers declared "Give them Hawaii but get my husband back," pleaded the hostages' wives.

Those days are so remote and their terminology so forgotten that even President Bush now speaks of "non-negotiable demands" (in his case, concerning human dignity), forgetting the deadly origins of this phrase.

Most anti-Western terrorist attacks these days are perpetrated without demands being enunciated. Bombs go off, planes get hijacked and crashed into buildings, hotels collapse. The dead are counted. Detectives trace back the perpetrators' identities. Shadowy websites make post-hoc unauthenticated claims.

But the reasons for the violence go unexplained. Analysts, including myself, are left speculating about motives. These can relate to terrorists' personal grievances based in poverty, prejudice, or cultural alienation. Alternately, an intention to change international policy can be seen as a motive: pulling "a Madrid" and getting governments to withdraw their troops from Iraq; convincing Americans to leave Saudi Arabia; ending American support for Israel; pressuring New Delhi to cede control of all Kashmir.

Any of these motives could have contributed to the violence; as London's Daily Telegraph puts it, problems in Iraq and Afghanistan each added "a new pebble to the mountain of grievances that militant fanatics have erected." Yet neither is decisive to giving up one's life for the sake of killing others.

In nearly all cases, the jihadi terrorists have a patently self-evident ambition: to establish a world dominated by Muslims, Islam, and Islamic law, the Shari'a. Or, again to cite the Daily Telegraph, their "real project is the extension of the Islamic territory across the globe, and the establishment of a worldwide ‘caliphate' founded on Shari'a law."

Terrorists openly declare this goal. The Islamists who assassinated Anwar el-Sadat in 1981 decorated their holding cages with banners proclaiming the "caliphate or death." A biography of one of the most influential Islamist thinkers of recent times and an influence on Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam declares that his life "revolved around a single goal, namely the establishment of Allah's Rule on earth" and restoring the caliphate.

Bin Laden himself spoke of ensuring that "the pious caliphate will start from Afghanistan." His chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, also dreamed of re-establishing the caliphate, for then, he wrote, "history would make a new turn, God willing, in the opposite direction against the empire of the United States and the world's Jewish government." Another Al-Qaeda leader, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, publishes a magazine that has declared "Due to the blessings of jihad, America's countdown has begun. It will declare defeat soon," to be followed by the creation of a caliphate.

Or, as Mohammed Bouyeri wrote in the note he attached to the corpse of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker he had just assassinated, "Islam will be victorious through the blood of martyrs who spread its light in every dark corner of this earth."

Interestingly, van Gogh's murderer was frustrated by the mistaken motives attributed to him, insisting at his trial: "I did what I did purely out of my beliefs. I want you to know that I acted out of conviction and not that I took his life because he was Dutch or because I was Moroccan and felt insulted."

Although terrorists state their jihadi motives loudly and clearly, Westerners and Muslims alike too often fail to hear them. Islamic organizations, Canadian author Irshad Manji observes, pretend that "Islam is an innocent bystander in today's terrorism."

What the terrorists want is abundantly clear. It requires monumental denial not to acknowledge it, but we Westerners have risen to the challenge."
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2798

Wow, just what I've said here on my blog before at least a couple of times.  A planting aid, hydro-gel polymer mixed into the soil absorbs water and holds it to the roots of seedlings while they become established.  I use it even with house plants and it does work.

Now that a Nobel Prize winner says it perhaps people will actually do it.

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"Kenyan Nobel Winner: Fight Global Warming, Plant a Billion Trees
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
FoxNews

Excerpt:

NAIROBI, Kenya — A Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner called on people around the world to plant 1 billion trees in the next year, saying Wednesday the effort is a way ordinary citizens can fight global warming.

Wangari Maathai, who in 2004 became the first black African woman to win a Nobel in any category, urged participants to ensure the trees thrive long after they are planted.

"It's one thing to plant a tree, it's another to make it survive," said Maathai, who founded Kenya's Green Party in 1987 and focused on planting trees to address the wood fuel crisis here.

Maathai said the campaign is meant to inspire ordinary citizens to help the environment.

"This something that anybody can do," Maathai said Wednesday at the U.N. conference on climate change, which has drawn delegates from more than 100 countries to Kenya.

Scientists blame the past century's 1-degree rise in average global temperatures at least in part on the accumulation of carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere — byproducts of power plants, automobiles and other fossil fuel burners. "

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,228198,00.html

 

"World Financial Markets Rattled by US Elections

"Hamas urges attacks on U.S. targets

By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer

<excerpt>

A CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas' military wing called Wednesday on Muslims around the world to attack American targets following reports that an Israeli tank strike killed 18 people in the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061108/ap_on_...estinians_hamas


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061108/ap_on_re_mi_ea/palestinians_hamas

Live links.  Just a little background.

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"Idaho state senator's sons arrested, cited in flag damage incident

Please get out and vote ...... or live with the decision someone else made for you. 

Great song ..... nails it. 

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"I make my living off the evening news
Just give me something-something I can use
People love it when you lose,
They love dirty laundry

Well, I coulda been an actor, but I wound up here
I just have to look good, I dont have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
Give us dirty laundry

Kick em when theyre up
Kick em when theyre down
Kick em when theyre up
Kick em when theyre down
Kick em when theyre up
Kick em when theyre down
Kick em when theyre up
Kick em all around

We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who
Comes on at five
She can tell you bout the plane crash with a gleam
In her eye
Its interesting when people die-
Give us dirty laundry

Can we film the operation?
Is the head dead yet?
You know, the boys in the newsroom got a
Running bet
Get the widow on the set!
We need dirty laundry

You dont really need to find out whats going on
You dont really want to know just how far its gone
Just leave well enough alone
Eat your dirty laundry

Kick em when theyre up
Kick em when theyre down
Kick em when theyre up
Kick em when theyre down

Kick em when theyre up
Kick em when theyre down
Kick em when theyre stiff
Kick em all around

Dirty little secrets
Dirty little lies
We got our dirty little fingers in everybodys pie
We love to cut you down to size
We love dirty laundry

We can do the innuendo
We can dance and sing
When its said and done we havent told you a thing
We all know that crap is king
Give us dirty laundry! "

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/d/don+henley/dirty+laundry_20042033.html

I smelled a decomposing rat and found it.       

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WASHINGTON – It makes for powerful imagery – an editorial appearing in the Army Times, the Navy Times, the Marine Times and the Air Force Times calling for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Many assume these publications are official or semi-official periodicals of the military branches, while they are actually under the same ownership as USA Today and under the management of an editor who has had his share of run-ins with the U.S. military in the past.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the president has shrugged off an editorial by the Military Times Media Group to fire Rumsfeld. Bush feels it is merely "grandstanding," he added. The editorial says Rumsfeld has "lost credibility" with top officers.

Snow called the editorial "a caricature" and a "shabby piece of work" filled with inaccuracies. He said it implied the administration's made nothing but "rosy" predictions about Iraq. Snow said that isn't true, leading the president to "shrug it off."

Shortly after Gannett bought the papers in 1997, the media giant installed as editor Robert Hodierne. He is best known for teaming up in 1969 with then-Associated Press reporter Peter Arnett in Vietnam to bring attention to a small group of American soldiers who refused to fight.

As he tells the story himself: "During that late August battle, A.P. reporter Peter Arnett and photographer Horst Faas filed a story about five G.I.s who, for a brief time, refused to fight. A few days later I arrived at the battle to write stories and shoot photos for Pacific Stars & Stripes.

"The story and photos that follow enraged the top brass in the Army. Its chief spokesman, Col. James Campbell, calling Stripes 'the Hanoi Herald,' said my writing gave aid and comfort to the enemy, adding, 'such stories do not border on treason, they are treason.'"

The editorials were timed to come out in all four publications simultaneously today – the final Sunday before the midterm congressional elections.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52790

Obsession video was yanked from Google videos shortly after I posted it.  Explains fully and graphically by people who are experts in the Middle East exactly what radical Islam's intentions are.  Also shows some subtitled speeches given by clerics spewing lies, inciting hatred toward anyone not of their belief calling for death to the US. 

It's worth anyone's time no matter how busy your schedule to view it in its entirety to get a graphic picture of who the enemy is and exactly how much evil is embodied within a totalitarian political system carefully cloaked as "religion"  ... which is one reason we in the west have trouble wrapping our minds around it. 

It's virtually impossible to fathom evil which all encompassing and there is nothing in recent history which can equate to it except Hitler's Nazis from which radical Islam sprang.  Don't believe me?  Do a search on Banna Nazi and see what you find.

______________________

Dr. Wafa Sultan in her debate with clerics on al Jazeera video posted here 

 http://switch5.castup.net/frames/20041020_MemriTV_Popup/video_480x360.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=null

______________________

Wafa Sultan noted in my blog here 

https://blogs.lotterypost.com/konane/2006/10/syrian-psychiatrist-on-her-way-to-israel.htm

https://blogs.lotterypost.com/konane/2006/3/tribute-to-a-hugely-brave-lady.htm

 

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From Powerlineblog.com this morning.

 

"Obsession

From Powerline, Kerry the gift that keeps on giving. 

 

At last night's Army-Air Force football game, someone unfurled this banner. It's reported that cadets on both sides cheered wildly. Click to enlarge:

John Kerry is a gift that hasn't stopped giving yet.

Via BlackFive, one of a number of excellent milblogs that we haven't linked to as often as we should.

UPDATE: And don't miss Austin Bay's superb meditation on military service, John Kerry and honor.

It's lengthy and multi-faceted. An excerpt:  "...............

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015764.php

"The Minuteman Project, founded by Jim Gilchrist (who is also the co-author of the book Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America’s Borders), is made up of citizen volunteers who watch our border with Mexico and report illegal entry to the border patrol.  For performing that thankless task in full compliance with the law, Gilchrist and his colleagues have been falsely maligned as fascists, racists, and even murderers.  They have been driven off the speaker’s platform at Columbia University and vilified by Leftist politicians and their handmaidens in the liberal press.

 

 

So it was no surprise that the mainstream media chose to ignore a recent press release, issued by his publisher, in which Gilchrist asked the question about Nancy Pelosi’s ethics that should be on the minds of every law-abiding American – including those immigrants who are following the law to become citizens here the proper way: “Do we really need a House Speaker whose every action is calculated to enhance her own financial interests, instead of focusing on how porous borders will affect the security of everyday American citizens?” 

 

 

Gilchrist did not stop there.  He demanded an investigation into Pelosi’s “economic stake in just the kind of illegal alien exploitation that we deplore in Minutemen.”  But you would never know it from the liberal media, who - while ignoring this demand - have had no compunctions in calling for Speaker Hastert’s head in the wake of the Foley page controversy.

 

Gilchrist was reacting to my report several weeks ago in FrontPage Magazine that Pelosi – who owns non-union vineyards in Napa Valley where grape-picking depends chiefly on the availability of cheap foreign labor – is doing everything she can to help open the floodgates to more illegal immigration.  And she wants the American taxpayers to pay their way.  As even more proof of this than I previously reported, Pelosi does not want employers like her to be required to pay the cost of illegal aliens’ hospital care.  She voted against a bill that would make employers liable for the reimbursements if an undocumented employee seeks medical attention.  And she voted in favor of rewarding illegal aliens from Mexico with Social Security benefits.

 

 

At the same time, Pelosi has led the Democratic opposition to any effective border controls or documentation requirements.  She opposed the Secure Fence Act of 2006, signed into law by President Bush, and voted against final passage of a border security and enforcement bill in 2005 which required that all businesses must use an electronic system to check if all new hires have the legal right to work in this country.  She voted against a bill to bar drivers' licenses for illegal aliens in 2005.  This year she opposed legislation requiring presentation of a legitimate government-issued photo ID to prove eligibility to vote, claiming that “there is little evidence anywhere in the country of a significant problem with non-citizen voters.”  She is dead wrong.  For example, an accused terrorist by the name of Nuradin Abdi was just recently reported to have illegally registered to vote at the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles.  Nuradin Abdi was indicted earlier this year as part of a conspiracy to blow up the Columbus Mall.

 

 

How many other terrorist suspects may have slipped through the system because Leftists like Pelosi oppose any meaningful screens?  Instead she continues to advocate our recognition of the flimsy, non-validated ID card that the Mexican consulates provide to illegal aliens before they cross over our border, called the “matricula consular”, which gives them phony documentation to set up bank accounts, apply for jobs, obtain social benefits, board airplanes, identify themselves to police, enter buildings that require IDs, obtain drivers’ licenses and then perhaps use those drivers’ licenses to try to illegally register to vote in our elections.  

 

 

Pelosi also believes in giving sanctuary to illegal aliens.  She opposed legislation to deny federal homeland security funding to state and local governments who refuse to share information they learn about an individual's immigration status with Federal immigration authorities.  Pelosi’s hometown of San Francisco is one of the sanctuary cities she voted to protect for the benefit of illegal aliens.  Pelosi even voted against strengthening our immigration law with regard to the deportability of alien terrorists.

 

 

Jim Gilchrist cut to the chase with this devastating observation that the mainstream media does not want you to read:

"As we’ve shown again and again in ‘Minutemen,’ the Democrats aren’t just hypocrites, but are working actively to subvert our legislative system to their own ends. Their only goal is votes, votes and more votes, no matter where they come from, no matter if they’re cast legally, no matter whether the person casting them is dead, alive, a citizen or an illegal alien."