Share on FacebookMany Americans have criticized Islam as a religion stuck in the 7th century (When Mohamed walked this Earth). Some find this to be insulting. Is it?
Ahmadinejad allies charged with sorcery
Close allies of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being “magicians” and invoking djinns (spirits).
Maybe the leaders don’t buy this and they are only using the story as a political club. If that is true, then THEY must believe that enough of their followers are stuck in the 7th century.
Barack Obama and other economic light weights want you to believe that speculators are the reason for high gas prices. (Please ignore the drilling moratorium, environmental regulations and high taxes). Walter Williams explains how speculation and the futures market is good for us:
Here’s a non-rocket science question: If you expect a reduced harvest of wheat, corn, rice or any other commodity some time in the future, what would be the wise thing to do about your consumption today? I bet that the average person would answer: Consume less now so that more will be available in the future.
But how in the world can people be encouraged to consume less now? Enter the futures market, which consists of a worldwide group of millions upon millions of traders, often called speculators. Speculators, betting on a future shortage, buy up wheat, corn and rice today in the hopes of making money selling it for a higher price when the bad harvest hits. As speculators buy more and more wheat, corn and rice, they drive up today’s prices. As today’s price gets higher, people consume less, but more importantly, people do the intelligent thing with bureaucratic edicts. The vital role of the futures trader, or speculator, is to allocate goods over different time periods. And, it’s not just wheat, corn and rice that must be allocated over time but all commodities including oil.
President Obama is not stranger to preaching about efficiency and green technologies. You have to wonder why he would even entertain this idea:
Obama administration floats draft plan to tax cars by the mile…read more
Right now we are taxed by the number of gallons we consume. Therefore, people with more inefficient cars pay a price at the pump. If we were to adopt a tax based on miles, there would be less incentive to conserve.
Why would the President want the free market to get in the way of one of his stated goals?
CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven
Wow…the privacy advocates should have a field day with this. Can you imagine if a Republican suggested such a thing?
Consider this proposal for food shopping:
Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties. Nearly half of those tax revenues would then be spent by government officials to build and operate supermarkets. Each family would be assigned to a particular supermarket according to its home address. And each family would get its weekly allotment of groceries—”for free”—from its neighborhood public supermarket. No family would be permitted to get groceries from a public supermarket outside of its district.
Who would not agree that this proposal is radical? This idea was hatched by Donald Boudreaux in the Wall Street Journal as a metaphor for public education.
We would never allow our most essential consumed product (food) to be delivered in such a manner. Why is it so important to deliver education this way.
I read this in the comment section of an NBC affiliate:
If you voted for Obama in 2008 to prove you’re not racist, you’ll have to find someone else to vote for in 2012 to prove you’re not an idiot.
Signed: va.shepherd
John Hinderaker or PowerLineBlog.com opines:
Knowing how SEALs generally operate–very fast–it seems highly unlikely that they engaged in any conversation with bin Laden about whether he wanted to give himself up. Which is a good thing; if they had brought Osama back alive, they would have had to turn him over to Eric Holder. That prospect was no doubt enough to make even Barack Obama shudder.
Can we now drop the pose that our fight with radical Islam is best handled as a police action. The police would be crucified for shooting an unarmed suspect.
After the successful operation to kill Osama, the Obama administration goes right to work snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Osama was armed. He wasn’t armed. He used a woman as a shield. He didn’t use the woman as a shield. We are going to release the photos. We are not going to release the photos.
The Obama administration could have piggy backed on the success of our military. Instead, they continue to show that they are in over their heads.
Fro m Iowa Hawk on patriotism since the killing of Osama
Yes, it’s true that some pre-January 2009 antiwar activists have remained morally and logically consistent in their opposition to America’s military presence in the Mideast; but, thank God, it appears now they were only a tiny, insignificant minority. Recent events have happily made clear that the antiwar movement of 2001-8 was overwhelmingly dominated by a vast silent hypocritical majority of craven political opportunists awaiting a Democratic administration to gleefully celebrate the covert execution of a man whom, until 28 months ago, they would have described as a “tragic civilian casualty.”
A real life experience with Nissan’s new electric car
The liberal plan for better healthcare: Punish the doctors.
Scherzer said the bill’s emphasis on punitive measures for physicians not following government-prescribed treatment methods under Medicare would increase his anxiety level to the point he would no longer be able to practice medicine. The maximum fine was previously $10,000; under the bill it will now be capped at $50,000. Scherzer said the fine system makes seeing a Medicare patients a difficult and stressful exercise.
“Doctors have actually committed suicide over these things. There’s no insurance to cover it,” Scherzer said, calling the fine system “tremendously complicated and Frankensteinian.” “It’s absolutely impossible to be certain you’ve complied. I feel like when I see a Medicare patient I have the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.”
Many older doctors will decide to retire. Many younger people will decide on other professions. Some doctors will switch to specialties that takes Medicare out of the equation…specialties like cosmetic plastic surgery. In the end, there will be decreased supply of doctors and an increase in the demand for doctors.
In the end, we will have fewer doctors, fewer choices, high prices, longer waits, diminished services and bigger taxes…but there will be no advantage for the rich. It will suck for everyone.
The news that Osama had been killed broke last night. My feelings at the news were more subdued the I would have imagined. I immediately questioned, what does this mean? What now? Osama Bin Laden may be dead, but terrorism isn’t.
As the news started rolling in, video of spontaneous celebrations where displayed. TV needs video and there are no pictures of the attack yet, so putting the celebrations on was not surprising. I found the celebrations strange. It wasn’t the reaction I had sitting at home with my family. I didn’t understand the emotion, but I wasn’t condemning it either.
Then today I heard of several people who felt the celebrations made the uncomfortable…like we should all lead our lives to protect your politically correct mindset from felling uncomfortable. They worried that we were acting like the savage Muslims who celebrated after 9/11.
This is typical moral equivalency from the left. Americans celebrating the death of one mass murderer is completely different then Muslims celebrating the death of thousands of innocent civilians. To consider the two in the same breath is a moral outrage.
This is the kind of nonsense they peddle in American colleges. You have to be educated by intellectuals to be this stupid.
David Wecht is running for Superior Judge in Pennsylvania and he recently said this at a fund raiser:
Pull away the varnish and gloss of the Republican leadership and all it comes down to is one simple word – greed
If you were a Republican or a business owner, you could bet that justice is not blind while Wecht sits on the bench.
Other speakers in at the event complained about balance because the Republicans swept the last election. Strange how we didn’t hear about “balance” from these guys when the Democrats were in power.
Maybe your dopey supporters buy your bull, but the rest of the state just got done throwing you out on your ass.
Forced diversity hurts those it is suppose to help.
For the four years I taught the AP English and composition course at English High, many of my students were victims of the AP mania that had invaded the system. Suddenly, officials had recognized the dearth of faces of color in AP classes and the drive to augment the AP minority population went into high gear. The College Board and sympathetic philanthropic rescuers rushed in to solve the problem by dangling the carrot of grant money, and the feeding frenzy was on. AP classes sprouted and multiplied across all disciplines. AP scouts scoured students’ report cards hunting for qualifying scores; teacher recommendations were solicited for students with the “potential’’ to do AP work, and the nominees were summarily conscripted.