Apparently It’s Not Just 18% of Americans Who Are Confused About President Obama’s faith

Pakistani Minister Wants Obama to Be ‘Leader of All Muslims’:

Minister of State for Industries Ayatullah Durrani, who belongs to the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, said the upcoming Eid-ul-Fitr festival, expected to be observed on September 11, would be a "golden opportunity" for Obama to offer Eid prayers and declare himself the leader of all Muslims.

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict the president will pass on the opportunity.

"In this way, all the problems of the Muslim world would be solved," Durrani told The Nation newspaper.

Apparently Minister Durrani hasn’t been watching the president’s attempts at solving the problems of the country he already leads.

Jesse Jackson Participates in Wealth Redistribution

As is often true, his participation was involuntary:

Jesse Jackson’s car stolen in Detroit

Several Detroit media outlets reported thieves stole Jackson’s ride — a 2009 Cadillac Escalade — from a parking lot near the city’s Doubletree Hotel.

The SUV was later recovered, but it was found without its rims and one of its windows had been broken, according to Detroit’s WXYZ-TV.

Jackson was in Detroit for a march and rally called “Rebuild America: Jobs, Justice and Peace.”

It appears we may be making progress with the “justice” part.

Quote of the Day

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America is where the world goes for more freedom and a better life. Texas is where Americans go for more freedom and a better life.Sun Aug 29 00:27:24 via EchofonJoshua Treviño
jstrevino

How the Other Half Thinks

Vanessa and I are touring with a girl from Sweden who lives in Vancouver and makes her living as a musician who lives largely on grant money. So you can accurately guess her political inclinations.

And our last tour was with a guy from Sweden / Denmark and lives there on government money as a musician. So you can guess his inclinations as well. Both are waaaay to the left of Castro.

Neither believe it is possible that there will ever be another World War, especially not in Europe. In their minds it is 100% impossible. Couldn't ever happen, no way, no how.

So you can understand that since they believe that, they think that the US military is a terribly evil anachronism, and when the US takes military action, both of them argue strenuously that we shouldn't, although neither has even a shred of an idea as to what we should do instead. Both object to the occupation of Afghanistan (not to mention Iraq) and consider our actions there dishonorable and maybe even evil.

They also see the US as being something like Nazi Germany because of our military. In fact when Mads saw the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band on TV, his comment was "Hitler would be proud." This comment literally turned my stomach a little, since many/most of the kids on that field had grandparents who fought Nazis to liberate Mads' grandparents who couldn't be bothered to fight them themselves.

I really like them both (rather a lot, actually) and so I am quite respectful of their belief system, and I try hard to understand it. Both are educated and intelligent and caring and sensitive people. And both really seem to like a lot about the USA.  The guy from Denmark thinks he wants to move here (he doesn't comprehend that our government won't give him grants to write folk songs).

I think it's easy for someone to think that their social order is superior to ours when they can afford to give money to starving artists to write songs, since their social order doesn't have to field a military.  It's pretty cool that their cultures so actively support the arts.

Maybe they are correct. Maybe there will never be another major war and the $350B/year we spend on keeping The Free World safe is just a horrible waste of money.  The USA is pretty awesome as-is. Imagine how awesome it would be if that $350B/year could go to funding the arts, curing cancer, ending poverty, putting a chicken in every pot.

If that's the case, it's easy to call the US military "evil".

If on the other hand, human history repeats itself as it has since the dawn of civilization, and once again there will be a war.  It will be our military that saves the Swedes and the Danes from evil. Real evil.

Will they then realize that our military – money that could have been indulgently spent on ourselves – was actually a kind of charity?  After all, without our military spending – so much of which goes to protect Europe – would their governments have been able to fund the arts?

In a very real way, my tax dollars that pay for our F-22s enables artists in Europe and Canada to write their songs.

I still hope they're right, and we're just wasting our money.  But I think we aren't.

Passengers Upset in Plane Non-Crash Incident

Oops:

British Airways apologized on Friday after a crew member mistakenly played an emergency message warning Hong Kong-bound passengers that the plane they were on was about to plunge into the sea.

About 275 passengers on a Tuesday flight out of London’s Heathrow Airport heard the message: "This is an emergency. We may shortly need to make an emergency landing on water," NBC News reported. "People were terrified, we all thought we were going to die," passenger Michelle Lord, 32, told Britain’s The Sun newspaper, which first reported the incident. "They said the pilot hit the wrong button because they were so close together." "I can’t think of anything worse than being told your plane’s about to crash," the Sun quoted another passenger as saying.

I can.  It actually crashing.  Count your blessings and stop yer whining!

How Not to Tell Your Parents

Via the WaPo, Bristol Palin, Levi Johnston say they're engaged to be married:

Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston say they're engaged and hope to get married within six weeks in Alaska. Palin, the daughter of 2008 vice-presidential candidate and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, is featured on the cover of Us Weekly with Johnston, holding their 18-month-old son, Tripp.

Bristol Palin tells the magazine that she finds the idea of telling her mother about her engagement "intimidating and scary."

Intimidating or not, I’m hoping she had the discussion with her parents some time between the interview and the appearance of the story in the newspaper.  I don’t think hearing about your engagement from the Washington Post or Us Weekly is likely to make Mom a lot happier about the whole thing. (via The Corner).

“Updates temporarily delayed”

Ah, iPhone delivery day has arrived as, coincidentally enough, the following message appears on the FedEx order status page:

IMPORTANT!
Package deliveries are proceeding as normal; however tracking updates are temporarily being delayed. Please try back later.

I wonder if the delay has something to do with 600,000 eager Apple customers hitting refresh every five minutes as they wait for their pre-ordered iPhone 4 to show up?

Kyl v. Obama

Senator Kyl of Arizona said on Friday that President Obama told him that securing the border is a “problem” because “if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reforms.”  The White House denies the conversation took place according to Politico.

Stories like this annoy me.  It seems very likely that the White House would deny Kyl’s story whether it’s true or not, and is there any chance at all that either side is going to get the other side to concede that it’s their own guy who’s lying?  Any chance?  No.  And unless Senator Kyl has a secret recording of the conversation, which seems rather unlikely, it would usually be a safe bet we’d never know for sure one way or the other.  (For the record, senator, if you do have a recording, that would be awesome.)

Of course, the logic Kyl claims Obama put forth would make logical sense coming from the president, given his stated agenda, and would be compatible with the political strategy the president and his supporters have repeatedly endorsed: “You never want a serious crisis go to waste,” as Rahm Emmanuel puts it.  And I had to laugh when I saw that in the very sentence where he denies the White House is so eager to promote “comprehensive immigration reform” that it would undermine border security, Obama’s Communications Director… manages to cram in a plug for comprehensive immigration reform:

“There are more resources dedicated toward border security today than ever before, but, as the President has made clear, truly securing the border will require a comprehensive solution to our broken immigration system,” [Dan] Pfeiffer said.

He couldn’t even wait and slip a period in there? 

In any case, notice Pfeiffer’s focus is on activity, not outcome.  He talks about resources spent, not about the results of that expenditure—because, of course, the border remain insecure.  Perhaps that’s a safe tack for the administration to take, since clearly a good number of the president’s supporters—legal and otherwise—don’t much want the borders secured, and I suspect a great many wouldn’t much care if he had to lie to keep them open.

So if “Marxist” is an Incendiary Term…

…as Russell says here, why is the Dalai Lama claiming to be one?

The First Minute

That's how long I had to watch the May 17, 2010 episode of "Glenn Beck" until he made me angry.  You see, my familiarity with this much loved (and much hated) pundit comes largely from clips I see on "The Daily Show", or "The Colbert Report".  So, I said to myself, "Myself, watch him, start to finish."  And I really thought it might take five or ten minutes for him to incur my wrath.  Nope.  I the first minute he said:

"We have Markist revolutionaries fundamentally transforming and 
attacking the republic of the United States and moving us a global 
community."

I have two problems with this.  1) I think there are probably not that many Marxists in government right now.  There are some Democrats, and maybe even a Green or two.  But no Marxists.  I have to assume Beck is being incindiary for shock value, not that he's dense enough to not know the difference.  And 2), is global community bad?  And if so, why?  He does not return to this theme again in the show.  So, maybe just a strange slip of the tongue.

In the ninteenth minute, he likens the impending collapse of our economy (which, if we don't believe is going to happen, we clearly have no honor… no, I'm not kidding, he said that) to a sinking ship, and underlined it by showing some of the more horrifying special effects from "Titanic".  Now, that's pretty bad.  But it got worse when he went directly from there to a commercial, which had an actor in front of a green screen, showing stormy seas, and we learn he's pitching GOLD as an investment.  Way to cozy up to your few remaining sponsors!

In the twenty-fourth minute he told us about the three things that the progressive movement at the start of the Twentieth Century did to undermine our country.  They systematically devalued our churches and our faith first, then the Constitution, then the founders. 

"We don't talk about the consitution anymore. The founders, we 
don't talk about."

Well, I hear people talking about the Constitution endlessly.  And as for the founders, I wonder if he's hoping people will want to hear more about the founders because he's selling a huge bucket of books about them on his website.  Only $828!

Now, to be honest, he did spend a chunk of the show talking about how terror suspects shouldn't have their rights abridged, Miranda-wize.  But he went on to take Eric Holder to task for being uncomfortable with the phrase "radical Islam", as if there's some sect out there with the name "Radical Islam" on the door.  And is it really a bad idea for our nations top attorney to be measured with his language?  Even when I agree with Beck, I disagree with him.

Well, there's one hour down.  I wonder what today will bring!