Obama Says U.S. Could Be Seen as a Muslim Country

As President Obama prepared to leave Washington to fly to the Middle East, he conducted several television and radio interviews at the White House. In an interview with Laura Haim on Canal Plus, a French television station, Obama noted that the United States also could be considered as “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."

He also said the United States and other parts of the Western world “have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.” I agree with that statement... but, unlike Barack Hussein Obama, who envisions all the world leaders sitting around a gigantic campfire while holding hands and singing "Kumbaya", I would put it under the heading of "know thy enemy".

We have no true friends in the middle east, although we do have some reasonably reliable political allies in the area. Saudi Arabia has been declared by Washington as one of our staunchest allies in the region, and that may be true - to the point that any Muslim can be a "staunch ally" of a non-Muslim. The religion of Islam prohibits befriending non-Muslims, but encourages the manipulation of political relationships to give the appearance of friendship. Essentially this is an allegiance of convenience. When the "friendship" is no longer beneficial to a Muslim, he may then terminate it, and turn upon his old "friend". And, when "the fit hits the Shan," it's the Muslims against everybody else - and there is almost 1,500 years of history which support that claim.

But then, I could be completely wrong about this... and Obama could be looking for a lost contact lens, not really bowing before King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Obama Supports Saudi Royals Immunity in 9/11 Lawsuit

In another one of his trademark "I have no idea what I'm doing." moves, the Obama administration - shortly after his last visit to Saudi Arabia, and just prior to another scheduled meeting with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah during his upcoming Middle East visit, has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to protect Saudi Arabia and four of its princes from being held accountable for their alleged role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States!

Through its solicitor general, Elena Kagan, the Obama administration has asked that the Saudis be held immune under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, or FSIA, even though there is ample U.S. evidence of complicity by the Saudi government and the named princes in support of al-Qaida's attack. This action would deny American survivors of those 3,000+ killed in the attacks on the Twin Towers the right to seek court remedies for their losses.

Is there any sign of justice in this action? Is there any indication that Obama has the best interests of Americans in any of his executive actions thus far? Is it any wonder that Iran and North Korea are testing Obama's ability to lead, and that the test results continue to show his failure of those tests? "Strongly worded letter to follow" is not much a deterrent to mentally unbalanced foreign leaders. Unfortunately, Obama's failure to take immediate and strong action will also be the failure of the United States of America.

I could be wrong about this, but only if the sun fails to raise in the morning.

Voter Intimidation Okay As Long As You Do It For The Favorite

According to the May 29,2009 issue of the Washington Times, the Obama "Department of Justice", headed by Eric Holder, has directed it's legal staff to drop the civil charges against three members of the "New Black Panther Party". If you recall, on November 3rd, 2008, there were complaints about one polling place in Philadelphia, where it was reported that the entrance to the building was being blocked by members of the NBPP.

The Obama administration won the case last month, but moved to dismiss the charges on May 15, at the direction of "unnamed political appointees". The three black panthers, Minister King Samir Shabazz, Malik Zulu Shabazz and Jerry Jackson were charged in a civil complaint in the final days of the Bush administration with violating the voter rights act by using coercion, threats and intimidation. (And what's with Jerry Jackson - how come he didn't get one of those really cool names? Or, was Shabbigg Shaddummy already taken?) Prosecutors also say Shabazz "supports racially motivated violence against non-blacks and Jews." Sounds like a thug to me!

My first question would be - why was this a "civil action" in the first place? Voter intimidation is civil rights violation, and a criminal act under federal law. Maybe that particular section of the United States Code is only enforced if you "encourage" people to vote for the wrong candidate.

I realize that it's not PC to imply that anyone outside the white race could possibly be a racist, but that is precisely my point. It's just that the media and others have an unwritten, informal, handshake agreement to ignore the fact that there are racists of all creeds, colors and ethnicities. Yes, folks, there are black, brown, red and yellow racists. "Whitey" does not have a corner on ignorance or prejudice. There are people who will hate you just for your skin color... or because you're a Jew, Muslim, Christian, or Atheist... or because you are a Liberal, Conservative, or politically non-affilliated. You can be hated for having a better job than somebody else - like it's your fault! And, if they can't find a better reason to hate you, they will hate you just because you are. You may rest comfortably in the knowledge that somewhere in the world there is somebody to hate everybody for any ridiculous reason.

Apparently though, racism is only bad when white individuals and private white organizations (KKK, Aryan Nation, Skinheads, the Council of Conservative Citizens, etc.) practice it. When the government practices racism (and yes, reverse racism and preferential racism is still racism), or minorities indulge in racist behaviors, it's expected to be acceptable. Racism is primarily a philosophy and practice of the ignorant. Nobody likes to look down the ladder of success, and see there are no lower rungs than the one upon which they are standing. Seeing oneself as being powerless (and perhaps, in reality, just too lazy) to do anything about improving their position, it prompts many people to create - if only in their mind - their own verison of "nigger". They do this using any/all of the preceding criteria, or perhaps additional/unmentioned criteria. Some people cannot stand being on that bottom rung - they then have to create what they see as an "inferior being" to look down upon. Their "nigger" isn't necessarily black, either - this "nigger" is an ego-saving concept, not a skin color or race. It could easily be folks that some people refer to as "white trash". And you don't necessarily have to be poor to be "white trash".

That's the truth as I see it. However, I could be completely wrong about this whole thing. What's your truth?

AP Article :"Oklahoma Druggist Arrested For Killing Holdup Man"

"OKLAHOMA CITY – Confronted by two holdup men, pharmacist Jerome Ersland pulled a gun, shot one of them in the head and chased the other away." Okay - so far, so good. Facing two armed robbers, Ersland defended his life, and the lives of fellow employees and customers, as he has every right to do. This is the serious down side of choosing a criminal lifestyle - you point a deadly weapon at somebody and they're just likely to kill you where you stand. The article continues...

"Then, in a scene recorded by the drugstore's security camera, he went behind the counter, got another gun, and pumped five more bullets into the wounded teenager as he lay on the floor." Oooops! Now we've violated the basic rule of self defense - the threat had already been neutralized (according to the report). Also, five more rounds seems a bit excessive... unless the robber was moving as if to retrieve his weapon (which we don't know). We also have the physical issue of adrenaline still flooding through Ersland's body after the experience, and possible PTSD (Ersland is a disabled Gulf War Veteran), or a "combat flashback". Nobody knows what was going on inside Ersland's head but Ersland. The video shows two men bursting in, one of them pointing a gun at Ersland and two women working with the druggist behind the counter. Ersland fires a pistol, driving the gunman from the store and hitting Parker in the head.

District Attorney David Prater said Ersland was justified in shooting 16-year-old Antwun Parker once in the head, but not in firing the additional shots into his belly. The prosecutor said the teenager was unconscious, unarmed, lying on his back and posing no threat when Ersland fired what the medical examiner said were the fatal shots.

The AP goes on to say, "Ersland, 57, is free on $100,000 bail thanks to an anonymous donor. He has won praise from the pharmacy's owner, received an outpouring of cards, letters and checks from supporters and become the darling of conservative talk radio."

"Many of those who have seen the video of the May 19 robbery attempt at Reliable Discount Pharmacy have concluded the teenager in the ski mask got what he deserved." I haven't seen this video, but I tend to agree with those folks. When a person puts on a ski mask and pulls out a pistol, then threatens somebody with it, the intended victim can reasonably assume you are capable of (and perhaps intent upon) taking somebody's life. You cannot tell a teenager from an adult when they have hidden their face under a mask - besides, a teenager with a gun can kill you just as dead as a 40 year old with a gun! By virtue of threatening to take the life of an innocent person - implied when brandishing a firearm - the criminal puts his own life in a position for potential forfeiture. Even a teenager should understand that!

Unfortunately for Ersland, the robbers weren't just teenagers... they were black teenagers. Okalhoma City should be getting a visit from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton any day now, claiming that Ersland shot the kid only because he was black - certainly not because he presented a lethal threat. Everybody knows that no self-respecting white man would ever shoot a white robber that was pointing a gun at him!

I suppose I could be wrong about all this, but, based on the information available at this time, I seriously doubt it. (If I was on the Ok City Grand Jury, I wouldn't even vote to indict Ersland, much less put him through a criminal trial.)

Rewarding Failure - The Other Side of The Same Coin

Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination by His Holiness, Barack Hussein Obama, to be the first female Hispanic justice of the Supreme Court of The United States has created quite a bit of controversy.

Sotomayor apparently agreed more with New Haven

, Conn., government officials than with white and Hispanic firefighters who were denied earned promotions by the city on the basis of their race. The New Haven Fire Department administered a civil service exam to choose a new batch of lieutenants and captains. The city went so far as to hire an outside consultant to design the test in order to ensure that it was job-related and not racially biased.

But after the tests were administered, and the results came in, only whites and Hispanics scored high enough to earn promotions. So naturally, New Haven city officials decided to scrap the exam results and promote no one!

Here we have a case of punishing the successful, which although not exactly the same as rewarding failure, provides essentially the same end result. Those applicants who had excellent service records - and were diligent in their studies for the promotion examination(s) - were denied that which they rightfully deserved. Why? Because black firefighters failed to achieve qualifying scores for whatever reason. Is this the fault of the successful candidates? NO! Why should those who did exercise due diligence be penalized because others either didn't, or lacked the ability to understand or retain that which they studied?

Consider this - if you were a firefighter dispatched to a four-alarm, fully-engulfed inferno, would you rather be given your instructions by somebody who was guessing at the risks involved, or by somebody who had demonstrated the required experience and knowledge to minimize the risks to his/her subordinates while still getting the job done. How would the FD fair if they should - God forbid - have a 9-11-type situation in New Haven without fully qualified front line leadership?

Discrimination in the workplace should be avoided at all reasonable costs. However, whenever lives are at stake - and a firefighters' life is at stake any time he/she enters a burning structure - they deserve to have the best qualified people directing lifesaving operations. New Haven city officials demonstrated due diligence when they hired an outside consulting firm to design the test(s) in such a way that they were not "racially biased". The failure is not in the test itself, nor in those who successfully completed the test - the failure was in the lack of proper preparation on the part of those who did not generate passing scores. Preparation (studying) for any test is a personal responsibility. Obviously many assumed that personal responsibility... and many did not.

In the subsequent lawsuit (Ricci v. DeStefano), seventeen of the high-scoring whites and one high-scoring Hispanic sued the mayor, John DeStefano, and other city officials for denying them promotions solely because of their race. The case, now 5 years old, is to be heard by "The Supremes" (SCOTUS) this month, and Sotomayor's decision vindicated the City of New Haven. She essentially said "reverse discrimination is acceptable" - a legal decision which should bury her chances of becoming one of "The Supremes". But it won't... because Sotomayor is a philosphical doppelganger for Obama. On the plus side, Sotomayor's decisions have been overturned by SCOTUS 83% of the time. Does her appointment to SCOTUS sound like a "good fit" to you?

Suddenly our culture is not simply rewarding failure (re: GM, AIG, et al)... they are now punishing success! This attitude will result in "the system" extinguishing the motivation of the best qualified personnel to seek leadership positions within the New Haven FD, and perhaps even drive them to leave such an inequitable organization, and seek recognition (and the attendant financial compensation) elsewhere. SHAME ON NEW HAVEN!

This is a race in which I, personally, have no horse. I live on the other side of the country, where we can still have a reasonable level of confidence when we need to call the fire department. I just hate to see blatant violations of any citizen's civil rights - including whites, Hispanics, blacks, Chinese, Lithuanians, Martians, etc.. If the prevailing rules say, "Take the test, pass the test, get promoted", then the successful candidates should be promoted - based upon their scores - into however many available positions New Haven FD has! If they only have fifteen available positions, then the top fifteen scorers should get those jobs. The other successful candidates should have to wait for additional vacancies.

I could be completely wrong about this.. but my 14 years of experience as a USAF training manager and training superintendent tells me I'm not. You don't have to be an attorney to know when something stinks!

VAT - One More Step Toward Converting The USA To European-style Socialism

Value Added Tax! This is a concept that most of western Europe implemented decades ago, to bolster failing economies. We can see how well that worked for them... inasmuch as their economies are now in the same dumper as ours. Granted it does raise more money for the government - but it is at the expense of the people! We do not, as a people, benefit from VAT. I mention VAT today only because it appears to have been revived by our Black/White Messiah.

After a bit of investigation, it appears that the average European Union VAT is roughly 20%. Three European nations (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) have a 25% VAT! Inflicting a VAT has been a dream of His Royal Highness Barack Hussein Obama since God only knows when. Grade school? The first documentation I have been able to find on his VAT position was in June of 2008, but that's just documentation of his socialistic desires.

Now add your State, County and local sales taxes to that VAT, and you'll see that it will cost you a bundle at the point of sale. Some EU countries even have VAT on basic necessities, like food, clothing, and shelter. No people have ever been taxed into personal prosperity - but they have been taxed until the government was enjoying prosperity.

At the risk of repeating myself from an earlier posting, we are not Europe! The United States had surpassed all of Europe in only 200 years, by functioning as a free-market, independent republic. The USA had no permanent income tax prior to 1913, and, prior to 1913, personal income was taxed only when our nation was embroiled in a war. What has put us in this financial predicament? Primarily it is the result of poor judgment in our Congress, following the exhortations of Barney Franks, and his League of Financial Morons, for the banks to lend mortgage money to people who didn't meet the minimum requirements established to ensure the loans could be repaid.

Actions such as that remind me of the almost continuous increases in the "minimum wage". Who among us does not understand that the minimum wage is the bellwether (leading indicator) for the cost of goods and services? When the minimum wage is forced upwards, manufacturers and service providers are equally forced to increase the costs of their goods and services in order to maintain (reasonable?) profit margins. There is no gain in personal income - workers just move into a higher tax bracket. Now, couple that cost with labor unions gouging corporations for what is basically unskilled labor (don't try to convince me that working on an assembly line requires more skills than the average chimpanzee possesses - been there, done that - if you have vision and hands, and any connection at all between the two, you can produce assembly line products.) Is it any wonder that 2/3 of our "Big 3" automotive corporations are facing extinction when their average blue collar worker's wage and benefit package costs them an outrageous $81 per hour? Thank you United Auto Workers! I hope those tens of thousands of soon-to-be-unemployed UAW members put some of their money under their mattresses -there's a long period of unemployment ahead for most of them in this economy. Oh yes, and don't forget to keep paying those union dues to the people who helped you become unemployed - while you're out of work! I also hope that the State of Michigan (and several other states) has some serious unemployment benefit money set aside for them.

VAT is not even an American concept, much less a tradition. AVOID THE "EVERYTHING IS FREE" TRAP OF SOCIALISM! It is only free as long as most people are working to support it! And who is dumb enough to keep working to support people they don't even know?

Write, phone, email your elected representatives and demand that they not support any VAT proposal in the USA. What happens if we are given no choice, and VAT is forced upon us? The American Revolution was begun because of unfair and unwanted taxation... ask King George III how that worked out for him.

Being The First Choice Does Not Necessarily Make One The BEST Choice

"President Barack Obama named federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor as the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice on Tuesday." Thus read the headline... isn't that an oddly worded sentence from a "professional journalist". Will Sotomayor ultimately be appointed to the (apparently) newly-established "Hispanic Supreme Court"? And will this Hispanic Supreme Court only hear Hispanic cases? (History recorded the last Hispanic Supreme Court in the 1400's. It was led by a man named Tomas de Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition.) Will the oral arguments before this court be presented in Hisp, instead of English?

Commenting upon her official nomination this morning, "My heart today is bursting with gratitude," Sotomayor said from the White House podium moments after being introduced by Obama.

Personally, I would have said something more like "My heart is bursting with pride." I checked Wal-Mart and Safeway to see what the per pound cost of Political Plums was today. Everlasting "gratitude" (and implied support) seemed to be the going price. The less competent the recipient of the Political Plum, the more gratitude was expected as payment. And we should certainly focus that political "blind eye" on the fact that Sotomayor is one of, if not the, most overturned federal judges by the Supreme Court.

As for the impartiality that one would expect from a justice of SCOTUS, here's what Sotomayor had to say about that a few years go: “Our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor [Martha] Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” [U.C. Berkeley School of Law, 10/26/2001]

Sometimes it's a shame that we are a "nation of laws" instead of a nation of JUSTICE, as we once were... before the laws were made horrifically more complex by "learned and scholarly men". Men whose primary objective was to insure that, in time of legal difficulties, it would be necessary to retain the services of their associates!

Yeah... I could be wrong about this, but I seriously doubt it.

Iran's President Mahmoud I'manutjob Rejects Western Nuclear Proposal

That's real close to the way the Reuters headline read. What's going on in the world? Did somebody accidentally leave the doors unlocked at some of the world's larger Laughing Academies, and now the lunatics are running those countries? Mahmoud I'manutjob, Kim Jong-il, and Robert Mugabe... how's that for a trifecta? Luckily, North Korea (Kim) and Zimbabwe (Mugabe) are so broke they can't even pay attention.

The people of North Korea - other than the ruling party - are dependent upon foreign aid for their basic subsistence. The DPRK can't feed their own people, but they apparently have LOTS of money to spend on missile development programs. What's wrong with that picture?

Zimbabwe's rate of inflation surged to 3,731.9%, driven by higher energy and food costs, and amplified by a drop in its currency, official figures show. That is according to their own Central Statistical Office. The Cato Institute reports that as of November 2008, Zimbabwe’s monthy inflation rate was 79,600,000,000.00% percent. Their annual inflation rate was calculated to be 89,700,000,000,000,000,000,000% - that's 89.7 Sextillion (10²¹) percent! It increases by 98.4% every 27 hours! The difference between them and the DPRK, is that the Zimbabwean government isn't a threat to anybody... except their own people. What has put them in this position? According to the BBC it was "driven by higher energy and food costs, and amplified by a drop in its currency, official figures show." What's concerns me about that is that it's the same path Obama is taking the USA down!

The last nutter, and quite possibly the most dangerous of the three, is the government of Iran. Iran's (public) leadership comes from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but the real power is wielded from behind the scenes by the head religious fanatic - Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The only "silver lining" I can find in that particular dark cloud, is my personal belief that Israel will not live in fear of one of their neighbors, and they will eliminate the Iranian's ablility to produce intermediate-range missiles and nuclear technology through preemptive military strikes.

There's an outside chance that I could be absolutely wrong about this... outside the realm of believability.

Gimme A Large Order of FREEDOM, And A Side of INDPENDENCE... TO STAY!

I was checking my email this morning when I noticed somebody had sent me a link to a YouTube video. My curiosity bested me, and I clicked on the link. The production was made in 1948, but it is SO TODAY! I thought to myself, "Everybody in the country should see this!" It impressed me enough to post the link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3U_5lqKh4U (you will probably have to copy & paste the URL into your browser, since the link is not underlined or in blue)

There are some things in this world which appear to be timeless. This little video is one of those timeless things, and it's still appropriate 61 years later. Even more appropriate on our U.S. Memorial Day than most other days.

REALITY BYTES! - aka: Things I've Thought About Recently

Or, reality BITES! Take your choice. It's your call, because it's your reality. I am aware that, more often than not, I tend to sound like the voice of doom in my blog. But, that's my reality, and it's the only reference point I have for my world. I do, from time-to-time, post the realities that others have shared with me, either directly (conversations, email, etc.) or indirectly (media reports, etc.). But, even then, what you see is my reality's take on their reality.

Although reality is an individual concept, nobody's reality is absolutely theirs... not if they live with or around other human beings. Our "personal realities" are colored by the society/culture in which we live, and begin at a chronological age that predates understanding. Those influences are parents, teachers, religious leaders, peers, tribal leaders/politicians, celebrities, media, and personal observations.

In a very general sense, the people of a given culture tend to share probably 85% (I just pulled that statistic out of my butt... hence the "probably") of a very similar personal reality. How widely and deeply the remaining 15% of their reality varies from the norm, determines how the individual is classified within that society. In some instances - people such as Jesus Christ, Alexander the Great, Rasputin, Adolf Hitler, and Mother Teresa - the individual deviation from the norm is so great that there is an historical record of it, and their accomplishments are known around the world.

In an attempt to ensure a homogeneous society, cultures establish centers of social indoctrination which we refer to as the "educational system". The purpose of the "educational system" is to indoctrinate the students in the expectations of the culture through modification of whatever "personal blueprint" the student may have been born with. For example, in the "educational" system of the USA, the indoctrination has been noticeably moving to the left for at least four decades. Prior to that, the shift to the left was more insidious - more clandestine. The result of that shift in indoctrination became most obvious with the election of an inexperienced, unvetted, junior senator from the corrupt Illinois political machine as the POTUS. The man who can say nothing better than anybody, easily mesmerized the majority of voters between the ages of 18 and 45 because they had been conditioned to accept empty promises from the left, and to believe that socialism is a good thing. (But, I must remind you once again - that is the perception from MY reality.)

Remember, that which we perceive as real is a function of how our mind processes information. Processing which has been influenced by those whose opinions and attitudes we respect, and our own previous life experiences. (Also, the mind is not a physical attribute - it is, itself, a function of electrical responses traveling through the circuitry of our synapses. What we call the "mind" is simply information processed, evaluated, and stored in compartments of the physical brain. A mind cannot exist independently of the brain. That would take an entire separate blog for me to discuss in detail.)

As I usually say... I could be completely wrong in my perception of reality... but then, so could you.