Monday, December 31, 2007

Hillary keeps embarrassing herself

Ms. Hillary does Pakistan

Thomas Houlahan comments on Ms. Hillary's recent discussions of events in Pakistan with Wolf Blitzer and George Stephanopoulos, addressing the question: "How credible is Hillary Clinton on Pakistan?" Houlahan writes:

"If President Musharraf wishes to stand for election," [Senator Clinton] told Blitzer, "then he should abide by the same rules that every other candidate will have to follow."

My immediate reaction was: "Did I hear that correctly?"

As a Pakistan analyst, I know for a fact that Pervez Musharraf doesn't wish to stand for election any time soon.

The upcoming elections are for the next parliament. Musharraf was just elected president of Pakistan, overwhelmingly, by popularly elected electors on Oct. 6. He's just begun his five-year term as the president of the country. Why would he ever want to run for one seat in parliament? It wouldn't make sense.

However, I checked the transcript of the interview later. That's exactly what she said.

My next reaction was: "Maybe she misspoke. Candidates do a lot of interviews. Not every sentence comes out the way they want it to."

After all, Sen. Clinton is a candidate who is running claiming big-time foreign policy knowledge and experience that she says her closest opponents in the Democratic Primary don't have.

Pakistan? A nuclear power? A front-line ally in the war on terror? A country that's been in the news an awful lot in the past few months? "C'mon," I told myself. "A candidate with all of those advisors has got to know at least the basics about Pakistan's political system."

No such luck.

Sunday morning, ABC's This Week ran an interview George Stephanopoulos had done with Sen. Clinton on Friday.

The interview produced this gem:

Referring to a possible delay in the elections, Sen. Clinton said: "I think it will be very difficult to have a real election. You know, Nawaz Sharif [leader of the PML-N, an opposition party] has said he's not going to compete. The PPP is in disarray with Benazir's assassination. He [President Pervez Musharraf] could be the only person on the ballot. I don't think that's a real election."

And then it hit me:

Sen. Clinton really didn't know that the upcoming elections were for individual seats in Pakistan's parliament. She actually believed that Bhutto, Nawaz and Musharraf would be facing off as individual candidates for leadership of the country in the upcoming elections.

Sen. Clinton didn't know that Nawaz Sharif isn't allowed to run for office in Pakistan because of a felony conviction. She didn't know that President Musharraf won't be on the ballot because he's already been elected.

Sen. Clinton, a candidate for the leadership of the free world, apparently doesn't know the first thing about the country referred to by some as "the most dangerous place on earth."

A transcript of Senator Clinton's interview with Blitzer is posted here; a video of Senator Clinton's interview with Stephanopoulos interview is posted here. If any of the major Republican presidential candidates had spoken in this manner about the scheduled elections in Pakistan, surely an issue would be made of it.

GOT IMPACT?

A New Year's Eve 'Special Gift' for all my readers:

There can be a big advantage in being the first to do something. Just imagine being one of the first stockholders in Microsoft if you have your doubts.

In fact, I just got a big advantage myself today because I've been paying attention to what Ken McArthur has been up to with his new beta site.

The last time Ken offered to let people into a beta site, it was his now famous jvAlert membership site. On the first day that it went into pre-launch, it went to 362 on the Alexa Rankings out of all of the millions of sites on the Internet.

It moved so fast that Alexa put it into it's coveted "Movers and Shakers" list. That's like getting an Academy Award for Traffic.

The beta site that he did before that did a quarter million dollars worth of business in just the first six months.

People in the beta program were going crazy, trying to get the word out last time, so this time Ken invited only invited a very small portion of his huge lists into this program to test the site.

And ... he told them that they couldn't tell anyone about the site. Since I'd been paying attention, I got the early notice.

But, he also told the small group that he would give them the first shot at letting people know about the site when the time came ... and IN THIS PARTICULAR CASE, that is VERY important.

You see, Ken is going to be giving away some pretty amazing
resources over the next six months as part of a HUGE book launch an incredible coaching program and a massive home study course.


Ken has been preaching about moving up the value of the materials that you GIVE away for a long, long time so ...

That means there are some great ZERO COST materials coming!

In fact I have one for you today!:

CLICK HERE

But that's not the reason why this BETA launch and moving early is so important.

THIS IS WHAT IS SO IMPORTANT:

Ken has designed his partner system so that the FIRST person to get a member to register for one of his ZERO COST resources, LOCKS that referral in for as long as they remain a member.

THIS SYSTEM IS DESIGNED FOR MAXIMUM RECURRING INCOME

All you have to do is offer your subscribers great zero cost resources.

Let's say that Jane Smith signs up today for Ken's amazing live audio recording with best selling author Brendon Burchard.

As soon as Jane signs up, she becomes a member of Ken's new site and for as long as you and Jane are active members, YOU GET ALL OF THE COMMISSIONS on ANY of the products and services that Jane may purchase for YEARS to come.

In this case, that could be huge!

There are going to be a whole series of high impact launches coming out of this machine.

Career Press is featuring Ken's new book, "Impact: How to Get
Noticed, Motivate Millions and Make a Difference in a Noisy World" as their LEAD book for the Spring book selling season.


I can't even tell you how big it's going to be.

It's going to be a HUGE pre-launch build-up, followed by a HUGE
book launch, a HUGE product launch and HUGE publicity for a brand-new HUGE brand-new (oops, can't even tell you about that one yet!)


Plus, Ken put together a great team of marketing experts to promote the book, along with promises from joint venture partners to promote the book to over 4.1 MILLION people, so you are going to see an amazing amount of buzz about the new book and products.

All of the following people have committed to helping Ken gain the maximum possible impact for the book:


Rick Frishman

President of Planned Television Arts. Some of the authors he has worked with include Mitch Albom, Bill Moyers, Stephen King, Caroline Kennedy, Howard Stern, President Jimmy Carter, Mark Victor Hansen, Nelson DeMille, John Grisham, Hugh Downs, Henry Kissinger, Jack Canfield, Alan Deshowitz, Arnold Palmer, and Harvey Mackay.


Jason Oman

#1 Best-Selling Author & Creator of 'Conversations with Millionaires - What Millionaires Do To Get Rich, That You Never Learned About In School!' and 'How To Make Money On Demand'.


Warren Whitlock

The Marketing Results Coach. His mission is to help authors and businesses improve the results of their marketing programs. Warren is a #1 best selling author, publisher, and editor of dailywarren.com, an online web log (blog) focused on book marketing.


Glenn Dietzel

Founder of the popular Awaken The Author Within teleseminar series and the Awaken The Author Within Mastermind Coaching Program. He is also the founder of the world's first BookCamp where he shared the floor with Dan Poynter. Glenn's expertise is helping people gain clarity in their market, and providing a step-by-step action plan to make this happen in a few short weeks.


Ben Mack

Best selling author of Think Two Products Ahead: Secrets the Big Advertising Agencies Don't Want You to Know and How to Use Them for Bigger Profits and is a sales and marketing expert and an award-winning ad-man who has worked on high-profile campaigns at several prominent agencies, including J. Walter Thompson, BBDO, WestWayne, T.G. Madison, WONGDOODY, and Deutsch.


Dave Lakhani

Has been described as a "Marketing Genius", "Business Acceleration Strategist" and "Multipreneur" by his peers and the media. He's been responsible for developing dynamic strategies driving record breaking growth and increases in sales in more than 500 businesses in the past 10 years.


And more, more, more ...


BUT HERE'S THE CATCH ...

The FIRST person to refer ANYONE, will lock that person in.

After they grab that first zero cost resource they are in the database and YOU are the person who gets all of the revenue from future purchases.

That means that the early-bird really gets the prize this time NOT THE WORM!

You can pick up the first resource and get signed up for the partner program automatically at:

CLICK HERE

By the way, the first gift is a great 48 minute live recording with Ken and Brendon Burchard worth $97 all by itself, so don't wait a second!

All the best,
lgstarr
PS: I heard Brendon Burchard speak at Ken's last event at The Coast Long Beach Hotel in August and he is hysterically funny!

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Quotes that make you glad George W. Bush is President!

"A zebra does not change its spots." - Al Gore, attacking President George Bush in 1992.

And three years later, at a press conference: "We all know the leopard can’t change his stripes." (The Toronto Sun, 11/19/95)

On March 19, 1998 Gore called The Washington Post's executive editor to tip him off about an ''error'' on the front page of his paper. ''I decided I just had to call because you've printed a picture of the Earth upside-down," Gore said. (See this reference) [Could that be why it is warming catastrophically?]

During a tour of the museum at Monticello, just before the 1992 inauguration, with news reporters present, Al Gore, pointing to the busts of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, asked, "Who are these people????" (New York Times, January 17, 1993)

More Gored

Friday, December 28, 2007

Gore's a crook

The most conspicuous doubter in France is Claude Allegre, a former education minister and a physicist by profession. His new book, ``Ma Verite Sur la Planete'' (``My Truth About the Planet''), doesn't mince words.

He calls Gore a ``crook'' presiding over an eco-business that pumps out cash. As for Gore's French followers, the author likens them to religious zealots who, far from saving humanity, are endangering it. Driven by a Judeo-Christian guilt complex, he says, French greens paint worst-case scenarios and attribute little-understood cycles to human misbehavior.
Read the whole thing

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Get sloppy, get hurt.

December 26, 2007: The U.S. recently revealed that China had done some major damage to the NSA (National Security Agency) via penetration of the NSA facility in Hawaii (which concentrates on monitoring China.) The Chinese effort was two-fold. First, the Chinese set up a Chinese translation service in Hawaii, and managed to make it appear as American owned (and able to pass a security check).

Eventually, this translation company got NSA contracts to translate material obtained from China. The operators of the translation of the company were able to pass the NSA material back to China, letting the Chinese know what information the NSA was picking up, which helped the Chinese figure out how the NSA was getting certain information, and with what. This made it easier to prevent the NSA from getting certain information, or setting up a trap, to feed the NSA false information.

But there was more. Many of the NSA employees were Chinese-American. The Chinese set up a recruiting operation, that was so carefully established and run, that it was several years before U.S. counter-intelligence caught on, and shut it down.

All this was a major blow to the NSA, and a reminder that, in the intel business, when you get sloppy, you get hurt.
Original article

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Stem cell research breakthrough!

The new technique, while far from perfected, is so promising that the man who managed to clone the world's first sheep, Dolly, is giving up his work cloning embryos to focus on studying stem cells derived from skin cells.
Read the whole thing!

HILLARY: Did she or didn't she?

As first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton jawboned the president of Uzbekistan to leave his car and shake hands with people. She argued with the Czech prime minister about democracy. She cajoled Catholic and Protestant women to talk to one another in Northern Ireland. She traveled to 79 countries in total, little of it leisure; one meeting with mutilated Rwandan refugees so unsettled her that she threw up afterward.

But during those two terms in the White House, Clinton did not hold a security clearance. She did not attend National Security Council meetings. She was not given a copy of the president's daily intelligence briefing. She did not assert herself on the crises in Somalia, Haiti or Rwanda. And during one of President Bill Clinton's major tests on terrorism, whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal dragged on.

In seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton lays claim to two traits nearly every day: strength and experience. But as the junior senator from New York, she has few significant legislative accomplishments to her name. She has cast herself, instead, as a first lady like no other: a full partner to her husband in his administration, and, she says, all the stronger and more experienced for her "eight years with a front-row seat on history."
Find out the whole truth here

Sunday, December 23, 2007

UFO's in Britain!

LONDON, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- The British government will soon release previously classified details regarding hundreds of reported sightings of unidentified flying objects.

Britain set to release secret UFO files

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007!

Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.

Many of the scientists featured in this report consistently stated that numerous colleagues shared their views, but they will not speak out publicly for fear of retribution. Atmospheric scientist Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of almost 70 peer-reviewed studies, explains how many of his fellow scientists have been intimidated.


“Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media,” Paldor wrote. [Note: See also July 2007 Senate report detailing how skeptical scientists have faced threats and intimidation...
Read the whole thing!

Monday, December 17, 2007

Make your child a star!

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Do unto others...

CHRISTIANITY:

Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets. (Matthew 7:12)

JUDAISM:

What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. That is the entire law. All the rest is commentary. (Talmud, Shabbat 31a)

HINDUISM:

This is the sum of duty: Do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you. (Mahabharata 5.1517)

BUDDHISM:

Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. (Udana-Varga 5,1)

CONFUCIANISM:

Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself. (Confucius)

SIKHISM:

Don't create enmity with anyone as God is within everyone. (Guru Granth Sahib)

BAHAI:

Lay not on any soul a load that you would not wish to be laid upon you, and desire not for anyone the things you would not desire for yourself. (Baha'u'llah, Gleanings)

ISLAM:

No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. (Sunnah)

Thursday, December 13, 2007

OBAMA: CHRISTMAS PRESENT TO AMERICA

Breaking from Newsmax.com

Oprah Factor: Big Boost for Obama

Dick Morris POLITICAL INSIDER with Eileen McGann:

The era of celebrity endorsements ended some time ago. We no longer buy the shaving cream that Derek Jeter tells us to use; nor do we vote as some Hollywood actor suggests.

We have come to assume that political endorsements are often the product of partisan loyalty rather than any particular standard of merit and that commercial testimonials come only in exchange for cash.

But Oprah’s endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is truly unique and will have a profound impact on the presidential race. She transforms a candidacy into a movement and will increase his momentum from a growth curve to a surging wave.

It is not just that people trust what Oprah says.

Her endorsement is important because of who she is and what message her support sends to those like her. As the most famous black woman in the world, she is a cultural icon. And as a figure who effortlessly crosses the racial divide, she has a special role in a presidential primary that pits the first woman against the first black for president with a serious chance of victory. In this environment, Oprah’s demographic is her message.

Oprah sends a message to all American women that it is OK not to vote for Hillary and one to African-Americans that they need to vote for Obama.

Were Oprah seen primarily as a black leader, her endorsement of a candidate of her own race running against one of her own gender wouldn’t mean that much. If her reputation were one for putting her race constantly ahead of her gender, her endorsement of Obama would seem automatic. But that is not who Oprah is.

She is iconic to women of all races; to them she’s a woman who is black, not a black who is female. So her refusal to endorse a fellow female seeking the presidency is tremendously significant to women voters.

She sends a message by her unusual intervention in a political contest in which a woman is running. It reads: A woman, yes. This woman, no.

Oprah’s embrace of Obama’s message of change stamps his campaign mantra as legitimate and turns experience into a disqualification rather than an attribute for Hillary. That this much-admired woman would turn against Hillary in order to seek change in Washington lifts Obama to JFK proportions even as it pins on Hillary — to her detriment — the Nixon slogan of 1960: “Experience counts.”

But to black voters, Oprah’s endorsement, precisely because it flies in the face of her gender, is especially significant.

The message it sends to African-Americans is It’s time. Her foray into politics to endorse Obama makes it clear that his candidacy has special relevance to all black men and women everywhere. It is not so much that she has reached into politics to back Obama as that the senator’s candidacy has such meaning for any citizen who is black that it reaches into Oprah’s life and demands that she come forth to support it.

Her endorsement seems to suggest that just as anti-Catholic bigotry went away when John Kennedy was elected, so racism may fade in the aftermath of an Obama presidency.

Oprah’s backing also helps tilt the balance of power to Obama and away from John Edwards.

Two challengers would have much less chance of beating Hillary than one would in a straight-on battle. But Obama and Edwards sound so much alike that it is hard to distinguish for which one to vote. Oprah’s endorsement almost anoints Obama as the challenger.

Finally, we must recognize that this is truly the first Christmas campaign, conducted not only against the harsh backdrop of news coverage but on a stage also festooned with holiday cheer. Now, in addition to the flag as a prop for campaigning, we have reindeer and Santa. Oprah is from the world of Christmas — mystical, cheerful, appealing, even beguiling.

She is no policy wonk but is cast well as a black, female St. Nick bringing joy to the world. Her endorsement softens Obama, wraps him up, and makes of him a Christmas present to America.

© 2007 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Climate warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant.

New Peer-Reviewed Study Finds ‘Warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence’

By EPW Blog Monday, December 10, 2007


An inconvenient new peer-reviewed study published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology.

Climate warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence:
Climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia report that observed patterns of temperature changes (‘fingerprints’) over the last thirty years are not in accord with what greenhouse models predict and can better be explained by natural factors, such as solar variability. Therefore, climate change is ‘unstoppable’ and cannot be affected or modified by controlling the emission of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, as is proposed in current legislation.

These results are in conflict with the conclusions of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and also with some recent research publications based on essentially the same data. However, they are supported by the results of the US-sponsored Climate Change Science Program (CCSP).

The report is published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society [DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651]. The authors are Prof. David H. Douglass (Univ. of Rochester), Prof. John R. Christy (Univ. of Alabama), Benjamin D. Pearson (graduate student), and Prof. S. Fred Singer (Univ. of Virginia).

Read all about it!

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Merry Christmas

Q: What is the shortest chapter in the Bible?
A: Psalms 117

Q: What is the longest chapter in the Bible?
A: Psalms 119

Q: Which chapter is in the center of the Bible?
A: Psalms 118

Fact: There are 594 chapters before Psalms 118.

Fact: There are 594 chapters after Psalms 118.

Add these numbers up and you get 1188.

Q: What is the center verse in the Bible?
A: Psalms 118:8

Psalms 118:8 says:
"It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man."

When things get tough, always remember:
Faith doesn't get you around trouble, it gets you through it!

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL
lgstarr

Thursday, December 06, 2007

DOES GOD EXIST?

by Herbert W. Armstrong

(1957, 1960, 1971, 1972 edition)

Can the existence of God be scientifically proved? Where did the first LIFE come from? Can we know whether God possesses MIND power?

LET’S FACE this question! Is it rational to believe in God? Is God merely a myth -- an invention of an ignorant, superstitious past? Many today assume this.

Questioned God’s Existence

With me -- and I hope with the reader -- I wanted to KNOW! I wanted to be SURE! I questioned the existence of God! Also I questioned the opposing doctrine of evolution. I did not seek to DISprove either. But I did research and carefully examine the evidences on both sides of this two-sided question. For this question is the very starting place for the acquisition of all knowledge. It is the FOUNDATION for UNDERSTANDING!

In my in-depth research into this question, starting 56 years ago, I emptied my mind of prejudice. I sought the TRUTH, whether it was what I wanted to believe or not.

There are the two possibilities of origins -- special creation by a Creator God, and the theory of evolution. It has become intellectually fashionable to accept the evolutionary doctrine. It has won popular acceptance in science and higher education. Even many professing Christian denominations have accepted it, if only passively.

Yet, though in the minority, there still remain scientists, educators, and fundamentalist religious groups, as well as those in Judaism, who cling to belief in the existence of God.

Don’t Assume -- KNOW!

Many of these, however, especially among the more or less religious individuals, have merely assumed the existence of God. Why? Simply because they were taught it from childhood. It has been believed in the circles in which they have lived or associated. But few of these have proved it!

Of course, on the other hand, perhaps a vast majority who accept evolution, at least passively, were simply swept into that acceptance in college or university. It became the scholarly “IN” thing. The opposite belief, special creation, has not been widely taught. It has not been objectively examined. Too frequently, proponents utilize the psychological ploy that it is a badge of scholarly status to accept evolution, and a stamp of ignorance or intellectual inferiority to doubt the hypothesis.

All of which goes to show that people in general believe what they do simply because they have been taught it, or because it has been accepted in their particular social environment. People want to belong! They go along with their particular group. In general, they believe what they have taken carelessly for granted -- without examination or proof!

Of course I know well, too, that people generally believe only what they are willing TO ACCEPT. In most instances people feel no compulsion to refuse what is accepted in their social or geographical environment. As one philosopher said, most dyed-in-the-wool evolutionists accept the theory because of their reluctance or unwillingness to believe in God.

As the book professing to be the Word of God says: “The carnal mind is enmity [hostile] against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Romans 8:7). All the facts, positive evidence, rational reasonings and proofs in the world will never induce such a one to accept that against which he is prejudiced. For prejudice is a barrier to the entrance of truth into any mind.

I Found PROOF!

I was forced, on examination of the facts, to realize there is no proof for the theory of evolution. It is purely a theory -- a belief- -a faith, not based on proof. Though its zealous proponents push it onto the world as if it were proven fact!

I found PROOF of the existence of the Creator God. I also found PROOF that the book called the Holy Bible is, in fact, the very inspired revelation from that all-intelligent, all-knowing God, of the vital, necessary, basic knowledge and instruction without which man is unable to solve his problems, prevent his evils, or live in PEACE, happiness, universal prosperity and abundant well-being here on earth. Man is the crowning product of his Maker. The Bible is our Maker’s INSTRUCTION MANUAL He sent along with His product.

Which God?

An atheist wrote me: “We have the history of many religions, and many gods. Which one of these gods do you claim for your God -- and how do you know that He exists?”

That’s a fair question. It deserves an answer!

Yes, my friends, I have a God.

The gods of some nations have been carved by men’s hands out of wood, stone, or other existing material. The gods of some religions and individuals have been carved out of human imaginations and faulty human rezonings. Some have worshipped the sun or other inanimate objects of nature. All these gods are merely the created -- most of them formed and fashioned by man, therefore inferior to man.

But He who did the creating -- He who brought everything that exists into existence, including all else falsely called God -- He who created all matter, force and energy, who created all natural laws and set them in motion, who created LIFE and endowed some of it with intelligence -- He is GOD! He is superior to all else that is called “God.” He, alone, is GOD.

Creation is the proof of God!

But during the past two centuries especially, there has developed among God-rejecting men in the Occidental world, the mental disease of theophobia. Two hundred years ago it appeared under the popular catch-phrases “deism” and “rationalism.” Then it masqueraded itself under the appealing name “higher criticism.” This pseudo-scholarship employed, as it advanced, such attractive titles as “progress,” “development,” and “evolution.” It has appealed to the intellectual vanity of a world groping in spiritual darkness in an era of widespread diffusion of knowledge. Creation Without a Creator? The theory of evolution provided the atheist an explanation of a creation without a Creator.

But this misguided “rationalism” failed utterly to account for the origins of things and of life; and today the more candid among geologists and biologists confess that they do not know how life could have evolved from inanimate matter, through the simple life forms, to the complex, interdependent species we see about us, finally to man. Lamarck’s theory of “use and disuse,” Darwin’s “natural selection” and other theories have now fallen by the wayside, and the “mutations” theory explains only the occurrence of varieties less fit to survive.

Amazing New Knowledge of Science

Now suppose we confine ourselves to facts!

What, then, has science actually determined?

Discovery and study of radioactivity during the past century has proved that there has been no past eternity of matter! Radioactivity is described as a process of disintegration. The atomic age is opening up new fields to explore. Soon after Madame Curie discovered the element radium, in 1898, it was discovered that radium, and the other radioactive elements as we know now, are continually giving off radiations. Has Matter Always Existed? So notice carefully what this now disclosed FACT of science means:

Uranium is a radioactive element heavier than radium. It has an atomic weight of 238.5. In decomposing, it gives off a helium atom, weight 4, repeated three times, and then the substance left is radium, atomic weight about 226.4. Radium, then, is simply the end product of uranium after it has lost three helium atoms. Then the disintegration continues in radium. And the final product of this process of radioactive disintegration is the element lead! Now of course this process requires great periods of time. The calculated half-life of radium is 1590 years -- uranium much longer.

I have seen it myself, in the darkroom of an X-ray laboratory. A tiny portion of
radium was placed on a mirror at the far end of a hollow tube, and I looked into this tube through a magnifying glass at the other end. Under this magnification what I saw appeared as a large, vast, dark sky, with thousands of shooting stars falling toward me from all directions. Actually what I saw were the emanations of tiny particles being emitted by the radium, greatly magnified.

We know, therefore, that there has been no past eternity of matter!

When Matter Did Not Exist

The radioactive elements in existence today have not yet been in existence long enough to have run their course, and disintegrated into lead. To have ALWAYS existed, without any definite time of starting in the past, this “life” period of radioactive elements long ago would have run its course. All radioactive elements would have long ago disintegrated into lead. Since these elements exist only for a definite span of years, and all the uranium, radium, thorium and other radioactive elements in the world today have not yet existed that many years, there was a time, prior to the duration of this span in the past, when these elements DID NOT EXIST!

Here we have definite scientific proof that MATTER HAS NOT ALWAYS EXISTED. Here we have definite specific elements which once, in the long ago, did not yet exist. Then there came a time, later, when these elements CAME INTO EXISTENCE. Evolution usually postulates that things come about GRADUALLY, through the slowmoving natural processes of the present. Try to imagine, if you can, something coming into existence out of nothing, GRADUALLY! Can your mind entertain the idea?

I think not. No, I think if you are rational, you will have to accept the fact of a special and necessarily instantaneous CREATION. And SOME POWER or SOME ONE had of necessity to do the creating. There is a cause for every effect. And in accepting that inevitable FACT, proved by the findings of science, of the existence of that GREAT FIRST CAUSE, you have accepted the FACT of the existence and preexistence of the Creator -- GOD! Where Did LIFE Come From? But how about the presence of life?

How did life get here? Science has learned some things about that, too.

The wisest of the ancients did not know what science makes available today. Thus it is demonstrated today that LIFE COMES ONLY FROM LIFE, and that each kind reproduces only after its kind (Genesis 1:25).

The works of Tyndall and Louis Pasteur, in the field of bacteria and protozoa, finally demonstrated scientifically once and for all in these more minute fields what Redi first demonstrated with larger organisms. All the advances of medical and surgical science in the treatment and prevention of germ diseases are based upon this great truth of the law of biogenesis -- that LIFE can come only from pre-existing LIFE.

No fact of science stands more conclusively proved today. Life CANNOT come from dead matter. There is not one shred of truth from science to account for the presence of life upon the earth by any means other than a special creation by the great original first Cause -- God -- who is life and the fountain source of all life! It is now absolutely certain, according to all that can be KNOWN from science -- according to all that is rational -- that it required A REAL CREATION to produce life from the not-living -- organic from inorganic matter. Life Only FROM Life. One cannot rationally deny the existence of my GOD, unless he can account for the origin of LIFE without a Creator who, Himself, is Life! The Creator, therefore, begins to be revealed, by science and by reason, as a LIVING God -- a God in whom is LIFE, and who alone has imparted life to all that have it!

I could go further, and show you that what science has discovered about energy and its origin and the laws of conservation of energy, also proves conclusively that “the works were finished from the foundation of the world” (Hebrews 4:3), that the material creation is a completed work, which is not now going on!

Next, then, let’s examine whether the great FIRST CAUSE is a Being of intelligence, or merely some blind, dumb, unintelligent FORCE. Is Anything Superior to Your Mind? Look about you. You admit that the transmission of knowledge to your mind is limited to the channels of your five senses.

So now I ask you, do you know of anything that is superior to your mind?

Look at the planets coursing through the sky. Behold, in all its splendor, the entire cosmic universe, with its suns, its nebulae and galaxies. Yes, they are inanimate. They have no mind, no intelligence. They cannot do what you can do -- think, reason, plan and carry out plans according to private volition and will.

The human mind can know, think, reason, plan and carry out its plans to execution. It can invent and produce instruments by which it may acquire knowledge of the vast
universe, or of the minutest particle. By developing rockets and computers, man is able to send astronauts to the moon and bring them back alive. He can cause rivers to run backward, turn the forces of nature to serving human needs. And now he has learned how to release the energy of the atom, and utilize a power so vast that man is able at last to annihilate all life from the earth.

But there remains one thing no man ever has been able to do. He cannot build, make, produce, or create anything that is superior to himself!

A man can take existing materials and out of them build a house. An automobile is almost a living thing, but the intelligence and powers required to invent and produce it are superior to the thing produced.

The Supreme Intelligence

To suggest to you that anything you could invent, make, build, or bring into being could be superior in intelligence and ability to you and your mind, would certainly insult your intelligence!

Now let me ask you candidly, do you honestly believe that any power or force of less
intelligence than your mind produced you?

If you do not believe in my God, then you have only the alternative of believing that something less than your intelligence produced YOU -- that dumb, purposeless UNINTELLIGENCE brought into being your intelligence! The only rational possibility is to acknowledge that the very presence of the human mind is PROOF that the great First Cause is also the SUPREME INTELLIGENCE, infinitely superior to the abilities of mortal man! Suppose You Were Creator? Suppose that you could add to your powers of reasoning, planning, designing, the actual CREATIVE power, so that you could project your will anywhere to produce and bring into being whatever your mind should plan and desire. Then, suppose you undertook the designing, creating, fashioning, shaping and setting in motion a limitless cosmic universe -- with planets and suns and nebulae and galaxies in all their splendor, each of these vast units being of such intricate and complex construction as the existing universe. On one of these planets you would plan and produce all the forms of life that exist on this planet -- and I do not mean reproduce, for there would be no present universe to copy. There would be worlds within a world, down to the minutest infinitesimal particles of matter we cannot even see by the aid of the most powerful microscopes.

Do you think your mind would be equal to the task?

Just stop and think.

Is it rational, then, to believe that any power or force lacking even human intelligence, could have planned, designed, created, formed, fashioned, shaped, put together and set in motion the awesome universe we behold?

The First Great Cause who created matter, then, stands revealed as the SUPREME INTELLIGENCE and ARCHITECT OF THE UNIVERSE!

The Miracle of Living Food

But again I say, look about you! Here are human beings on this earth, composed mainly of certain, specific elements of matter -- living, organic matter. These elements of life must be supplied and replenished through food, water and air.

No man, with all his ingenuity and science and laboratory facilities, CAN PRODUCE FOOD! That is, he cannot take plain inorganic matter and turn it into the living substance we call food. But some Power, Force, Intelligence, or Being did in some way, at some time, start the process going -- a process far too wonderful for any man to devise or produce.

And so it is that out of the ground grows grass, and green leafy vegetables, and all other vegetables, and vines and trees yielding fruit -- each with its seed in itself, each through this seed reproducing after its kind -- and it is very good!

But when a marvelous little grain of wheat is planted in the ground, a plant develops and sprouts above the ground, and in some manner too wonderful for any human mind to understand or imitate, the elements drunk in through the roots from the ground are utilized by the life germ in the seed of wheat, and new grains of wheat appear. During this process, the inorganic iron and other elements dissolved in the ground, drunk into the roots and carried up into the new grain of wheat, have been actually converted into organic matter which can be assimilated as food.

And this same marvelous process takes place in the growth out of the ground of all grains, vegetables, fruits and foods. When we eat animal meat we are merely consuming, secondhand, the vegetation which the animal ate.

MAN, with all his vaunted science, his technical laboratory facilities, with all his inventive genius, lacks the intelligence and the powers to produce a grain of wheat, or to convert inorganic matter into living food. Then is it rational to say that forces or powers exist, of NO intelligence, which have been able to produce this living miracle of food? Did not a far GREATER intelligence than man design, create, and supply man with all of this?

Man’s Intelligence Versus God’s

But now let’s COMPARE the wisdom and intelligence of man with that of God who brought these marvels into being, and keeps them functioning.

The grain of wheat GOD causes to grow out of the ground is a perfect food. But, like other perfect gifts from God, man fails to value the priceless perfection of the all-wise God, and, undertaking to improve on God’s handiwork, perverts, pollutes, and defiles it! Every bit of God’s perfection man’s hand has ever touched, it would seem, he has besmirched, spoiled and polluted!

And the poor, defenseless grain of wheat is no exception! Into flour mills of human devising go the millions of bushels of healthful wheat. Yes, the sugar refiners do thesame thing to sugar; and nearly all foods on the market for human consumption today have gone through man’s factories and suffered from man’s processes until they have been devitalized, depleted of their health-giving properties and turned from foods into slow-acting poisons! And these foodless foods with which man has tampered in lust for profits have produced in human bodies a whole series of diseases of which our forefathers of a few generations ago never heard! Result: Today human beings drop dead before their time with heart failure, others die with cancer; the population suffers rheumatism, arthritis, diabetes, kidney diseases, anemia, colds, fevers, pneumonia and thousands of other diseases. We respond to the toothbrush and toothpaste ads and frantically brush our teeth, but our teeth keep decaying and we lose them beginning at an early age because of lack of calcium and fluorine in our diet.

Whose intelligence is higher -- that of the GOD who provided every perfect need for every living thing, or that of greedy, gullible, God-rejecting humans who, in the interest of bigger profits and more luxuries for themselves, have ROBBED the very foods God created and gave us, of their health and body-building values?

“There Was No Watchmaker”

I needed an accurate watch with a very plain dial for timing broadcasts. The only kind that filled the need was a railroad watch. I have one -- the very finest railroad watch made, a 23-jewel watch.

But it does not keep perfect time. Once or twice a week I have to adjust it a second or two, if I want to be sure it is accurate to the second. I set it by the master clock of my city (or any U.S. city), which is always found at the Western Union office. But even this clock does not keep perfect time. Once or twice a week it must be adjusted by a second or two to the master clock of the nation, by telegraph, from the Naval Observatory, Washington, D.C. There at the Naval Observatory is the master clock of the U.S.A. But this great master clock of the United States is not perfect, either. It, too, must be adjusted and corrected occasionally.

Yes, it is corrected by the MASTER CLOCK OF THE UNIVERSE -- UP in the skies -- by astronomers! Up there in the heavens is the great master clock that NEVER makes a mistake -- is always ON TIME -- never off a fraction of a second -- the heavenly bodies coursing through the skies!

Now you, sir -- my doubting friend! If I show you my fine precision 23 jewel railroad watch and tell you that it was not made in a factory after all -- in fact, it was not designed, planned, put together, by any watchmaker at all -- that it just sort of HAPPENED -- that the iron ores just brought themselves up out of the ground, refined themselves, formed and shaped themselves into the delicate little cogs and wheels and other pieces; the silicon just came of its own accord out of the earth and turned itself into the glass crystal; the gold case just refined itself, shaped itself; the cogs and wheels and scores of little parts just assembled themselves together in that case, wound themselves up, and started themselves running and keeping almost perfect time -- well, if I should try to tell you anything like that, you’d tell me I’m crazy or a fool, would you not?

Certainly! You know that the presence of that watch is RATIONAL AND POSITIVE PROOF of the existence of a watchmaker, or watchmakers, who thought it all out, planned it, formed it, shaped it, put it together and started it running.

Master Clock of the Universe

But then you, Mr. Skeptic -- you look up into the great vast sky at the MASTER CLOCK of the universe, which never misses a second -- the perfect watch by which we must constantly set all our imperfect man-made watches -- and you tell me, “That all just HAPPENED! There was no Great Watchmaker! No Master MIND thought out and planned that vast universe, brought it into being, set each star and planet in its own exact
place, and started the myriad heavenly bodies coursing through space, each in its prescribed orbit, in its orderly precision. No, it just fashioned itself, put itself together, wound itself up, and started itself running. There was no Intelligence -- no planning -- NO CREATION -- NO GOD!

Do you say that to me?

If you can, I answer that I do not respect your intelligence. And the God I acknowledge replies to you, “The FOOL hath said in his heart, There is no God”! (Ps.
14:1; 53:1.)

If you can look about you, and observe how intelligently PLANNED and executed is everything in nature and in plant and animal life -- everything we see except the bungling, botching, polluting of God’s beautiful handiwork by the clumsy hand of Godignoring-and-rejecting MAN -- and then say you doubt the existence of an all-wise, allknowing, all-powerful Creator GOD, then I do not have much faith either in your rational processes or your sincerity as a seeker of the Truth!

Who are we?

Dear Abby

My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning and when I confront him, he denies everything. What's worse, everyone knows he cheats on me. It is so humiliating.

Also, since he lost his job six years ago, he hasn't even looked for a new one. All he does all day is smoke cigars and cruise around with his buddies while I have to work to pay the bills. Since our daughter went away to college he doesn't even pretend to like me. He doesn't even defend my reputation when people suggest I may be a lesbian.

What should I do?

- Clueless

*************************************************************************************
Dear Clueless,

Grow up and dump him. Good grief, woman. You don't need him anymore! You're a United States Senator running for President of the United States. Act like one!

- Abby

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

What the Founders said...

...in their own words:



"The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature." --John Adams (letter to Thomas Jefferson on June 28, 1813.)



"I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus." --Thomas Jefferson (letter to Charles Thompson on January 9, 1816.)



"History will also afford frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of a public religion and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern." --Benjamin Franklin (writing in his "Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, page 72, 1749.)



"The attempts by the rulers of a nation to destroy all religious opinion and to pervert a whole people to atheism is a phenomenon of profligacy. To establish atheism on the ruins of Christianity is to deprive mankind of its best consolations and most animating hopes and to make a gloomy desert of the universe." --Alexander Hamilton (April 7, 1798.)



"The rising greatness of our country is greatly tarnished by the general prevalence of deism which, with me, is but another name for vice and depravity. I hear it is said by the deists that I am one of their number; and indeed that some good people think I am no Christian. This thought gives me much more pain than the appellation of Tory, because I think religion of infinitely higher importance than politics. Being a Christian is a character which I prize far above all this world has or can boast." --Patrick Henry (A. G. Arnold: "The Life of Patrick Henry of Virginia, 1854, pages 249-250)



"I have a thorough contempt for all men who appear to be the irreclaimable enemies of religion." --Samuel Adams (letter to William Checkley on December 14, 1772.)


“From the day of the Declaration, the people of the North American Union and of its constituent states were associated bodies of civilized men and Christians. They were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledged as the rules of their conduct.” –John Quincy Adams (Address on the 4th of July, 1821.)


“Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.” –George Washington (letter to the Clergy on March 3, 1797.)


“You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do every thing they can to assist you in this wise intention.” –George Washington (June 12, 1779 to the Delaware Indian Chiefs.)


“I have sometimes thought there could not be a stronger testimony in favor of religion or against temporal enjoyments, even the most rational and manly, than for men who occupy the most honorable and gainful departments and who are rising in reputation and wealth, publicly to declare their unsatisfactoriness by becoming fervent advocates in the cause of Christ; and I wish you may give in your evidence in this way.” –James Madison (letter to William Bradford on September 25, 1773.)`


"The most important of all lessons is the denunciation of ruin to every State that rejects the precepts of religion." -- Gouverneur Morris, penman and signer of the Constitution (September 4, 1816.)


"Whoever is an avowed enemy of God, I scruple not to call him an enemy to his country." --John Witherspoon, signer of the Declaration (May 17, 1776.)


"I anticipate nothing but suffering to the human race while the present systems of paganism, deism, and atheism prevail in the world." -- Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration (letter to Noah Webster on July 20, 1798.)


“Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure…are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.” –Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration (letter to James McHenry on November 4, 1800.)


“However gradual may be the growth of Christian knowledge and moral reformation, yet unless it be begun, unless the seeds are planted, there can be no tree of knowledge and, of course, no fruit. The attempt to Christianize the heathen world and to produce peace on earth and goodwill towards men is humane, Christian, and sublime.” –William Ellery, signer of the Declaration (The Library of American Biography, Vol. VI, pp.138-139.)


“The Christian religion is superior to every other…there is not only an excellence in the Christian morals, but a manifest superiority in them to those which are derived from any other source.” –John Witherspoon, signer of the Declaration (lecture IV, “On The Truth Of The Christian Religion.”)


“Only one adequate plan has ever appeared in the world, and that is the Christian dispensation.” –John Jay, original Chief-Justice U.S. Supreme Court (letter to Lindley Murray on August 22, 1794.)


“Let us enter on this important business under the idea that we are Christians on whom the eyes of the world are now turned. Let us earnestly call and beseech him for Christ’s sake to preside in our councils.” –Elias Boudinot, President of the Continental Congress (speech in the First Provincial Congress in New Jersey.)


Regarding the John Adams quote: “This would be the best of all possible words if there were no religion in it.” – he was illustrating something in his letter to Jefferson (April 19, 1817) and followed the remark (taken out of context) with this: “But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean hell.”


Regarding the George Washington quote: “The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian religion.” – It is a fragment of a longer sentence within Article XI of the 1797 treaty with Tripoli explaining to Muslims that the Federal government would not go to war against them.


Regarding the the Thomas Paine quote: “I disbelieve all holy men and holy books.” – probably true (but unlocatable) however Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Rush, Charles Carroll, John Witherspoon, John Quincy Adams, Elias Boudinot, and Patrick Henry (among others) all strongly repudiated his other statements of a similar nature.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Social Security – The Biggest Con Job in History

Our Social Security system is really a safety net, not a retirement plan. When you put money away for retirement you invest in, and build, a nest egg – assets you can spend in retirement. After handing over 15.3% of their working life income in the form of payroll taxes to the government there is no nest egg waiting for Americans at retirement. Instead the government sends you a paltry monthly check only large enough for many to avoid starvation.


Politicians call Social Security a retirement plan to fool the people into believing the all-giving, all-knowing, all-powerful government has got their back when they retire. In reality, the government and their “common good” politicians have been stabbing Americans in the back for over 70 years. They justify their con with the sound bite that 50% of the people would fall below the poverty line without their Social Security check, After investigating the truth this article reveals that line should make you ill.


The “con” is what you could have done with the 15.3% of your lifetime income if you didn’t have to pay it to the government. This year the government’s payroll tax collections will be over $1.3 trillion or $7,650 for each of America’s 170 million households. That means the average household must earn just shy of $50,000 per year.


Now what could this household do with the annual $7,650 it pays to the government to prepare for retirement. If it had invested that amount on a weekly basis for 40 years or 2,080 weeks into indexed stocks (funds with 500 or more different stocks in them) it would have compounded into a nest egg of $9,878,000 at the average rate of return for the S&P 500 stock index for the last 30 years or 12.8%. That rate is just about half of the 25% return on investment that Warren Buffet, the multi-billionaire investor, has made on his investments over the last 30 years.


Now if the taxpayer just earned 10% in the first year of his retirement – his 41st year – he would get a $82,000 monthly retirement check just off the income from that nest egg. His yearly income would be $987,800 or nearly 50 times his last annual salary. Now the 12.8% includes a price inflation factor of 3% but doesn’t include a wage inflation factor in the computation. A lower rate of return will generate a smaller nest egg - even a 4% real growth rate and 3% inflation rate or a 7% combined rate generates in 40 years a $1,700,000 nest egg. and a $14,000 a month retirement check.


The proof of the con can be understood in the recent study of the net worth of the average non-Hispanic black and non-Hispanic white. The average black has a net worth of $11,800 and the average white $118,000. What is really important is not the discrepancy between black and white but the enormous difference between these amounts and the millions they would have accumulated if they had “personal investment accounts” for the last 40 years. Roughly speaking Americans would have over $500 trillion in stocks and bonds instead of the $23 trillion households presently hold. If one concentrates on just reforming or replacing Social Security – you miss the bigger picture of wealth creation altogether.


Personal investment accounts will not only make the poor and middle-class rich it will vault the American economy to new levels. Annually diverting payroll taxes of $1.3 trillion into each taxpayer’s personal account and immediately investing such amounts in the capital markets (stocks and bond funds) will explode the growth of the American economy – explode it geometrically. As the nest egg can be willed to their kids succeeding generations will be wealthier and further explode the growth of the economy by the investment of those inherited funds in the capital markets.


Personal account legislation has ancillary benefits. It cuts the American budget in half as mandated entitlements are extinguished along with their many unfunded liabilities. As the payroll taxes are eliminated, the tax cut will be the biggest in the history of the planet. As this plan we call “Rise Up America” really delivers the “common good” utilizing free market principles capitalism will relegate socialism to the dustbin of history. By having one personal account for every person, millions of other retirement plans can be scrapped, played out or merged into a person’s personal account.


Business has incurred substantial retirement costs with which foreign manufacturers aren’t saddled. They say a new American car has as much as $2,200 of costs associated with retirement plan costs for older workers. Personal accounts will eliminate the need for business to incur and be saddled with these costs thereby improving their competitive position in the market.


There are so many benefits we can’t list them all here. For blacks personal accounts will act as a substitute for reparations. Women can stay home, rear the kids, never work a day in their life and retire a millionaire by means of automatically accumulating 50% of her husband’s personal account in her own personal account – the ultimate solution to increasing the birth rate, solving our demographic problems and increasing the supply of labor domestically. For a list of other benefits read the Mission Statement on the www.riseupamerica.us website. There are numerous tables there proving the compounding effect of nest egg accumulations.


Some will say that we can’t afford the cost to transition to personal accounts. We say that we can do it off-budget for 6% of what it has cost us to lower interest rates to revive the economy. Actually America is so wealthy it is embarrassing. We have a country worth $400 trillion and a debt to all foreigners of only $2.3 trillion. We can transition to personal accounts out of petty cash and have the government guarantee existing and all future retirees that their monthly checks will never be less than what is promised to them today by existing entitlement programs including Social Security, Disability and Medicare. The potential $83 trillion of unfunded liabilities we hear so much about we owe to ourselves so they are a wash on America’s balance sheet as are 77% of our national debt of $9 trillion which we owe to ourselves. Remember this is a government of, by and for the people.


We manufacture as well as consume almost 30% of the world’s goods and services with only 4.5% of the world’s population. We have built 4 million miles of interstate highway and 350,000 bridges and overpasses on $3 a barrel Saudi crude that would cost $150 trillion to replace today at $100 a barrel. America is so far ahead of the game it may take centuries for the third world’s large populations to catch us –if ever.


Yet we are running on one cylinder as the comparison of what our individual net worth is now to what it can become. Taxing the poor and middle-class with punitive payroll taxes is a major mistake made by America’s political leaders. It is best to get off the tax the poor and middle-class train right now and transition to personal accounts. See www.ownershipsocietyinstitute.com. It should be the people’s rallying cry in electing Congress and a President in 2008.


Dick McDonald
www.riseupamerica.us
12/3/07

Monday, December 03, 2007

If [Hillary] actually was managing the national economy from 1993-2000 from her perch as wife of the president, let her release White House documents

“What plausible claim does Miss Hillary have to experience in managing a national economy, balancing a budget or fixing income inequality? Even on health care, according to her husband, the aspiring ‘first louse’ (he wants to be called first laddie, but I think the derivation from first spouse works better) claims that she didn’t have much to do with Hillary Care—it was his fault. Is the national media actually going to accept without even a murmur of skepticism Hillary Clinton’s claim to possess all the experience gained by her husband as president?... There is a difference between a candidate having a particular policy and having experience in managing such a policy... If she actually was managing the national economy from 1993-2000 from her perch as wife of the president, let her release White House documents showing her active participation in such management... Isn’t it time for The Washington Post to do one of its excellent deep research pieces in which they review in detail what substantive issues Hillary was deeply involved in from 1993-2000? Other than keeping an eye on Bill, let’s find out at what else she actually has experience.” —Tony Blankley

Sunday, December 02, 2007

John Kerry can't stop digging his own grave

PATRIOT PERSPECTIVE
John Kerry: Unfit, period.
Jean-Francois Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are at it again.

In October 2003, Kerry chose to make his disputed Vietnam war record as a Swift Boat “hero” the centerpiece of his campaign for the presidency. In doing so, he also called attention to his undisputed provision of “aid and comfort” to the enemy in time of war.

In response, a large contingent of Vietnam vets who also served on Swift Boats—some who served with Kerry, some who served in the same area as Kerry, and some who were Kerry’s former commanding officers (Grant Hibbard and George Elliott)—challenged Kerry’s record in a series of televised ads, and a book, Unfit for Command.

In all, more than 250 Swiftees, including Kerry’s entire chain of command, are on record as questioning his fitness to serve as Commander in Chief. Conversely, only three of Kerry’s 23 fellow officers-in-charge from Coastal Division 11 support him.

The Swiftees claimed that Kerry was “unfit to serve” because of his “willful distortion of the conduct” of American servicemen in Vietnam, and the “withholding and/or distortion of material facts” regarding his own service.

“The ads were produced to expose the braggart Kerry’s incautious claims about his service during the Vietnam War,” notes American Spectator editor R. Emmett Tyrrell. “That would be the war Kerry participated in briefly before coming home and traducing his fellow comrades in arms with vicious lies and distortions before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee.”

The Swiftees’ challenge also highlighted Kerry’s participation with the radical “New Soldier” movement, but Kerry arrogantly brushed off the challenge—and his presidential aspirations were dashed.

Two weeks ago, billionaire entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens, who had funded part of the 2004 SBVT ad campaign, renewed the challenge by offering $1,000,000 to anyone who could disprove any of the accusations made by the Swiftees in that ad campaign.

That was the setup.

In a letter to Mr. Pickens, Kerry responded, “While I am prepared to show the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth lied on allegation after allegation, you have generously offered to pay one million dollars for just one thing that can be proven false. I am prepared to prove the lie beyond any reasonable doubt.”

Pickens countered Kerry: “In order to disprove the accuracy of the Swift Boat ads, I will ultimately need you to provide the following: 1) The journal you maintained during your service in Vietnam. 2) Your military record, specifically your service records for the years 1971-1978, and copies of all movies and tapes made during your service. When you have done so, if you can then prove anything in the ads was materially untrue, I will gladly award $1 million.”

That is the trap.

Of course, Kerry’s response has gotten plenty of media play in more than 300 articles sporting headlines like “Kerry Takes Vows to Disprove Swift Boat Claims,” and even Leftmedia editorials proclaiming, “Bravo, finally, for John Kerry. Beyond any doubt he served this country bravely...”

But no evidence refuting the Swiftees’ claims has been forthcoming, nor will it be. Kerry is banking on MSM credit for accepting the Pickens challenge without ever showing up.

Kerry is now ducking the challenge, claiming that Pickens’s request for bona fide documentation constitutes “selectively backing away from your original challenge, retreat, a new bet, and changing the subject.” In other words, if Pickens won’t just accept Kerry’s word as fact, Kerry will not accept the challenge.

The debate about Kerry’s “hero” status, including questions such as why his Silver Star has three different citations (none of which account for the degree of valor commensurate with the award), will likely never be adequately resolved. In fact, Kerry’s refusal to release his DoD Standard Form 180 and DD214, accounting for all his military citations, records and discharge from the military, has fueled the debate.

Kerry requested an SF-180 back in 2005, and the Department of Defense quickly obliged, so why all the obfuscation—why not simply release the entirety of his records? Perhaps, because those records would create more questions than they answer?

Kerry did provide some of his records to his hagiographer, Douglas Brinkley, and then claimed he could not release those records to the media because of an exclusive agreement with Brinkley. However, even Brinkley says that their agreement stipulates only that quotations from those records cite his book, not that Kerry was prohibited from releasing them otherwise.

The dispute about Kerry’s Vietnam conduct and citations notwithstanding, the real issue is not Kerry’s service record, but his traitorous actions between 1971 to 1978, when he was discharged from the Navy—which is why Pickens asked for Kerry’s service records for those years.

Was Kerry’s discharge revised in accordance with Jimmy Carter’s Executive Order 4483, which provided radical protestors and draft dodgers blanket pardons? Is that why his discharge was subject to review by a “board of officers” in accordance with Title 10, U.S. Code Section 1162 and 1163, which pertains to grounds for involuntary separation from military service?

Here is a sure bet: Kerry will not produce those records because he knows Pickens will use them to document our case against Kerry for treason, as outlined in the Petition to Investigate and Indict John F. Kerry for acts of treason.

Kerry provided “aid and comfort” to the North Vietnamese enemy during the Vietnam War, meeting in Paris with NVA communists while he was a commissioned Navy officer.

He has supported Communist dictators in Nicaragua and Cuba, and, more recently, his flip-flopping on Iraq and claim that those serving there are “stuck in Iraq” because they are too ignorant to do anything else have served to stiffen our enemies’ resolve.

At best, Kerry, by his own account of his actions and protests, violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Code while serving as a Navy officer.

Most notable among his infractions would be the aforementioned meeting with North Vietnamese negotiators in 1970 and 1971, in which he willingly placed himself in violation of Article Three, Section Three of the U.S. Constitution, which defines treason as “giving aid and comfort” to the enemy in time of warfare.

The pertinent language states: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President... having previously taken an oath... to support the Constitution of the United States, [who has] engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

It is likely that no action will be taken on the Petition to Investigate and Indict John F. Kerry for acts of treason while Kerry is a sitting senator, but if Pickens is able to obtain Kerry’s records and document his meetings with North Vietnamese principals, Kerry could be prosecuted for violations of Article Three, Section Three, and disqualified from any future campaign for national office.

Like Pickens, The Patriot is committed to holding Mr. Kerry accountable for his actions, as there is no statute of limitations for acts of treason. Indeed, we are all committed to serving Kerry with an irrevocable dishonorable discharge from public office.

Now, then, Mr. Kerry, about that million-dollar challenge from Mr. Pickens: We’re still waiting...

Quote of the week
“Good luck Boone, trying to get those military records. Kerry promised to release them [1,034] days ago, and an anxious nation (except for a few select reporters) still holds its breath.” —The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto, who has kept track of the days since Kerry first promised to release his full military records to Tim Russert on NBC’s “Meet the Press”

On cross-examination
“Kerry has no way of knowing where this issue will go next, and unless he wants to take a chance of ending his mediocre political career, he should let sleeping dogs lie... Kerry is really hoping that the general malaise about him and this issue will allow him to ‘counterpunch’ without really having to produce any evidence. He is hoping that, in the public’s current antipathy for him, he will be able to ‘clear the record’ through the mere ‘acceptance’ of the T. Boone Pickens challenge alone, whether or not he ever takes any action moving forward... Kerry will produce no new evidence, but the MSM will gladly recall this effort as the ‘counter-attack that cleared his record’.” —Michael McBride, USMC (Ret.)

The BIG lie
“Mr. Pickens, I would be more than happy to travel to Dallas to meet with you in a mutually agreed upon public forum. I look forward to setting up a visit at the earliest possible, mutually convenient time.” —Jean-Francois Kerry, ostensibly accepting Boone Pickens’s $1,000,000 challenge. We suppose this meeting hinges on the meaning of the word “mutually.”

Immigrant Population Hits Record 38 Million

A new study by the Center for Immigration Studies, based on the latest Census Bureau data, shows the number of immigrants in America, both legal and illegal, has swelled to a record 38 million this year – making one of every eight U.S. residents an immigrant.

The new numbers indicate the highest level in more than eight decades – with a third of those being illegal aliens.

One third of immigrants are on some form of welfare, costing states nearly $20 billion a year, the study claimed, adding that efforts to legalize the spiraling number of illegal aliens will only increase the amount of uneducated, uninsured legal immigrants burdening America’s welfare rolls.

Since 2000, more than 10 million immigrants have entered the U.S., more than half of them illegally, according to the CIS. With no change in U.S. immigration policy, another 15 million immigrants will likely arrive in the next 10 years.

“The last seven years have been the highest period of immigration in American History,” says the report’s lead author, Dr. Steven A. Camarota. “The roughly 1.5 million immigrants arriving each year have a very significant effect on American life.”

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the CIS, tells Newsmax that the deleterious effects of continued immigration, include “an increasing burden on taxpayers to subsidize a 19th century workforce imported into a 21st century society; further displacement and wage reductions for the low-skilled and teen-age American workers who are the chief competitors of illegal immigrants; and continued slowing of technological innovation in the fields where immigrants are concentrated due to the artificial flooding of the low-skilled labor market and consequent reduction of incentives for businesses to mechanize and use labor more efficiently.”

The impact is being felt most pointedly in a handful of states. California, Florida, Texas, New Jersey and Arizona are bearing the brunt of immigration increases both legal and illegal, the CIS study found. California’s 10 million immigrants alone make up 27 percent of the nation’s total immigrant population.

“Some 75 percent of immigrants settle in ten states,” Krikorian tells Newsmax. “But Americans in other states are not immune to the effects of mass immigration. The consequences for security, sovereignty, assimilation, and government spending are national problems. In other words, every state is now a border state, every town a border town.”


A third of all U.S. immigrants come from Mexico, making it the top country of origin followed by China, India, the Philippines and Vietnam. Almost 60 percent of the Illegal aliens entering the U.S. come from Mexico.

The numbers portend a major shift in American demographics. More than 72 percent of native U.S. residents are white, 13 percent are black, 10 percent are Hispanic and 2 percent are Asian. But among the burgeoning immigrant population, over 48 percent are Hispanic, 23 percent are Asian, 21 percent are white and 7 percent are black.

Camarota, research director at the CIS, a Washington think tank that favors immigration restrictions along with improved services for legal immigrants, says immigrants now make up one in every five school-age children in America. Immigration accounts for all of the increases in public school enrollment nationwide over the past 20 years, the CIS reports.

In places such as Los Angeles County and New York City, the children of immigrant fathers make up nearly 60 percent of the school-age population.

On top of that, a quarter of these immigrant children live in poverty and a third lack health insurance, something Camarota says “creates enormous challenges for the nation’s schools, healthcare system and physical infrastructure.”

In fact, the study found that 17 percent of immigrants and their children live below the poverty line – with income of less than $20,000 per year for a family of four - some 50 percent higher than the poverty rate for native U.S. residents.

Many immigrants do ultimately find a better life here. But the study reveals that even those who have been in the U.S. for more than two decades are more likely than native residents to live in poverty, lack health insurance and use the welfare system.

Camarota points out that the numbers indicate the reason for the high rates of poverty and welfare among immigrants is a lack of education, “not their legal status or unwillingness to work.”

More than 31 percent of adult immigrants have not completed high school, compared to just 8 percent of U.S. natives. Since 2000, immigrants have boosted the overall number of workers who lack a high school diploma to 14 percent.

Camarota’s findings on the quality of life for uneducated immigrants shows that attempts at so-called amnesty for the current population of 12 million illegal aliens would prove costly and provide little benefit.

“Immigrants who have legal status, but little education, generally have low incomes and make heavy use of welfare programs,” the CIS report states. “If we decide to legalize illegal immigrants, we should at least understand that it will not result in dramatically lower welfare use or poverty.

“Those who advocate such a policy need to acknowledge this problem and not argue that legalization will save taxpayers money or result in a vast improvement in the income of illegal aliens,” the report continues. “Legalized illegals will still be overwhelmingly uneducated and this fact has enormous implications for their income, welfare use, health insurance coverage, and the effect on American taxpayers.”

Of the estimated 12 million illegal aliens in the U.S., nearly 7 million have jobs. Illegal immigrants earn an average of $46,000 per household annually compared with $67,000 for native families, the CIS study shows.

“A central question for immigration policy is whether we should allow in so many people with little education — increasing job competition for the poorest American workers and the population needing government assistance,” says Camarota. “Setting aside the lower socio economic status of immigrants, no nation has ever attempted to incorporate nearly 38 million newcomers into its society.”

America has, of course, traditionally been a nation of immigrants. But the CIS report points out that the immigrant population now accounts for a large share of the increase in the overall U.S. population. During the first decade of the last century, the 3.2 million additional immigrants accounted for just 20 percent of the total increase in the U.S. population. The 6.8 million immigrant increase in the last seven years equals 34 percent of U.S. population’s rise in that same period.

“Whatever one thinks of contemporary immigration, it is critically important to understand that its effect on America represents a choice,” Camarota says. “Selection criteria can be altered, as can the total number of people allowed into the country legally. With illegal aliens accounting for nearly one in three immigrants, their effect on the nation by themselves is now very large.”

True to the CIS charter, Krikorian stresses that there “ is no excuse whatever for intolerant attitudes toward legal immigrants -- we admitted them according to the rules established by our elected representatives, and we must, and will, continue to embrace them as Americans in training.

“Even illegal immigrants must be treated humanely as they are detained and returned to their homes,” Krikorian says. “But future legal immigration is a different question -- mass immigration is simply not compatible with the goals of a modern society and should be minimized to the extent possible.”

Immigrant Population Hits Record 38 Million

© 2007 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Friday, November 30, 2007

GALLUP: Republicans Report Much Better Mental Health Than Others

PRINCETON, NJ -- Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43% of independents and 38% of Democrats. This relationship between party identification and reports of excellent mental health persists even within categories of income, age, gender, church attendance, and education.

The basic data -- based on an aggregated sample of more than 4,000 interviews conducted since 2004 -- are straightforward.

View Poll

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Global Incident (Live) Map!

When you click on the web site link below, a world Map comes up showing what strange and dangerous things are happening right now in every country in the entire world and it is updated every few minutes.

You can move the map around, zero in on any one area and actually up-load the story of what is going on. It is amazing when you can see the things that are happening right here in the U.S.--sometimes right in your own state or even your city.

Global Incident Map: There is a lot happening in our world every minute. This "map" updates every 300 seconds...constantly 24/7.

http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php

O Lucifer! My Lucifer!

Monday, November 26, 2007

PARENTS: Nine-Point Guide to Discern Islamist from Non-Islamist Schools

Begin the Debate: Nine-Point Guide to Discern Islamist from Non-Islamist Schools

By M. Zuhdi Jasser


Islamism is a veiled political insurgency


Last month, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released specific concerns about the Saudi Academy in Northern Virginia. The USCIRF raised a number of issues of concern for American security in their October 19 release not least of which is the operation of a school for high school age children, The Islamic Saudi Academy, on American soil in northern Virginia administered and funded by a foreign embassy. The USCIRF also specifically brought attention to hate and violence against other faiths expressed in some of the texts used at the Academy.


The Commission press release stated, “Several studies, including by Saudi experts themselves, have pointed to serious concerns that these texts encourage violence toward others, and misguide the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion, they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the “other.” This is only one example poignantly raised by the USCIRF on the heels of their recent trip to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia a nation whose metastatic Wahabism is arguably the primary cancer cell in global militant Islamist ideology. It should, however, just be the first step in an American journey toward a public accountability for “Islamic” educational institutions in the United States.


Islamic education or Islamist education?


America’s public attention to the curricula and texts of Islamic parochial schools should not only be limited to this single foreign school on our soil, but also more comprehensively to the curricula of all Islamic schools in the United States. This is not about profiling much as Islamists may try to say in their protestations to this debate. But rather it is about understanding the penetration of an ideology which consciously and subconsciously teaches the superiority of a political system of governance at odds with the American political and justice system. This is also centrally relevant in the conflict against militant Islamism. At odds with the American way of life is not only the more obvious militant ‘jihadist’ fringe component of political Islam but also the less obvious, more pervasive and more insidiously dangerous movement of political Islam as a way of life.


For the Islamic educational institutions in America founded only with the purpose of teaching our Muslim children the love of God, righteousness, Islamic theology, pluralism, humanitarianism, character, humility, charity, and other personal religious principles as it applies to God, I see no threat to our freedom in the U.S. However, the more relevant questions are how these institutions of Islamic education handle topics of American government and law. As an anti-Islamist Muslim, I am waiting anxiously to hear a public debate about what is taught in their U.S. history and government classes as compared to the Islamic jurisprudence classes of these “Islamic” schools. The schools around the country are all relatively new and wasting no time in creating a generation of students which are more likely than not to be defenders of Islamism over anti-Islamist systems based in universal liberty. While only a minority of Muslims send their children to these schools, they are a growing and significant minority countered only by a silent majority of Muslims.


Most American Muslims are not products of Islamist education


Having grown up in a small Midwestern town, I am a product of K-12 and undergraduate public education in northeastern Wisconsin. While I mostly learned the personal rules of my faith and theology from my family and weekend school at the mosque in my youth, I gained the foundations of my appreciation for the sanctity of our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and American legal system through that Wisconsin public education system. For example, I recall participating in the American Legion Constitution contest- an annual competition of Wisconsin high school students best able to memorize the U.S. Constitution. Islamic schools will similarly have Koran memorization contests which are also admirable, but will they also have Constitution contests? More importantly will their government classes teach primary allegiance to it over the Koran in as far as guiding documents for governments?


Permeating my own educational experience was the preeminence of America’s pluralism and Constitutional legal system based in individual liberty over all other systems from communism to fascism to theocracy. I was taught the value of criticizing authority and proving my ideas in the public arena of debate. Do Islamic schools teach their students to question the authority of their imams (teachers)? The Enlightenment was taught as a liberation of the human mind over the suffocation of the theocrats. How do Islamic schools teach Enlightenment compared to an Islamist theocratic society?


It is time to discuss in a comprehensive public manner, the context in which Islamic parochial schools teach Islamic history. Is the Islamic state and its history with a caliphate, Islamic dynasties, and Islamic law taught to naïve Muslim children as the ‘glory days’ of Islamic dominance? Or was it simply a period of historical advancement in the context of mankind’s evolution toward the far more free and humanitarian western societies of today based in real religious liberty?


This historical paralysis is manifested in two basic areas. First, Islamic law as it exists in our Muslim theological texts today is frozen in basically the 13th or 14th Century when ijtihad (modernization of Islamic law) ended. Additionally, do these Muslim youth learn in their formative years that access to government and political leadership should be open to every citizen equally regardless of faith or religious education (as it is in the west)? Or do they contrarily learn that government and rule-making is the domain of the self-appointed Islamist scholars (ulemaa) who seek to control societal law?


Schooling which teaches the ‘preeminence’ of a sharia-based legal system (Islamic jurisprudence) over any other governmental system should raise profound concern in non-Muslim and Muslim Americans about the creation of an insidious political insurgency.


Discerning Islamist from non-Islamist Schools - a guide to begin the debate


The only way to counter such an insidious ideological insurgency is for us as a nation to undertake a far-reaching analysis and public discussion about what students at these Islamic schools are actually being taught about ‘sharia’ law and its role in the society. Here are a few questions American communities may want to pose to principals and curriculum coordinators of local Islamic schools in order to understand whether the school has a political agenda in its teachings or not.


1. How does the school teach American history and the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights? What is taught about the struggle of our founding fathers against theocracy? Is European Enlightenment ideology taught? Are students encouraged to learn from non-Muslim philosophers especially those who influenced our founding fathers and taught liberty and freedom?

2. Are students taught that sharia is only personal or that it also specifically guides governmental law? Does their answer change whether Muslims are a minority or a majority?

3. Do they view non-Islamic private and public schools as part of a culture of ‘immorality’ and decadence since they are not Islamicized or can non-Islamic schools be morally and equally virtuous?

4. Do they teach their children that ‘being American’ and being ‘free’ is about moral corruption or is being American and free about loving the nation in which they live and sharing equal status before the law regardless of faith tradition?

5. Is complete religious freedom a central part of faith and the practice of religion? In the Islamic school, how are children treated who refuse to participate in school faith practices?

6. Are the children taught Muslim exclusivism with regards to the attainment of paradise in the Hereafter? From that, are the children also taught that government and public institutions must thus be ‘Islamic’ in order for the community as a whole to be able to enter the gates of Heaven?

7. How are student discussions, debate, and intellectual discourses approached regarding American domestic and foreign policy? Do the teachers have a political agenda? Does that agenda demonstrate a dichotomy between Islamist interests and American interests?

8. Is the historical period of Muslim rule of Spain (Andalusia) taught in the context of the history of the world during the Middle Ages or is it looked upon as superior to current day American ideology even after the advances of the Enlightenment?

9. Is the pledge of allegiance administered every day at the beginning of the school day?


Certainly, this analysis and exposure would not be in any way to limit the freedom of Muslims to establish and operate these private educational facilities. But rather, quite the contrary, with exposure of the political Islamist agenda of many of these schools, Islamist schools will be slowly marginalized or obligated to reform. Then the non-Islamist and anti-Islamist schools will flourish while teaching reasoned pluralistic Islamic thought wholly compatible with the foundational principles of America.


It is not too much to expect schools operating on American soil to manifest an ideology which is not politically anathema to the founding ideals of our nation.


The scope of the problem – taxpayer complicity


A recent 2004 study by the NCES documented 182 Islamic private schools in the United States. Just last week the Voice of America trumpeted a report that, “Muslim Americans Establish own Schools in the U.S.” This statement of fact was presented with the apparent assumption that such a fact was good for Muslims and good for America. That would be the case if Islamism was not being taught and they would in fact be an asset if anti-Islamist ideas were being encouraged and debated. However, the simple fact that the schools taught Arabic seemed enough to the VOA reporters. Someone needs to inform them that translation services are often only as good as the ideological and political agenda of the translators themselves. In today’s oversimplified discourse on Islam it seems to matter little to the media or government whether Islamic schools are creating growing legions of pro-Islamist Muslims or not.


Let us also not forget that many of these institutions are operating with tax benefits and tacit government endorsement. A few receive direct government support as charter schools which is incomprehensible in the setting of what should be a separation of religion and state in America. Others, however, receive indirect government support through tax incentives as exists in Arizona or voucher programs as have been implemented in Ohio. There needs to be a greater public awareness of whether the ideology taught at these schools is compatible with Americanism and freedom as we know it.


Islamic schools are an important front in the battle of ideas


Many are finally realizing that as a nation we are not simply fighting a tactic of terrorism but rather an ideology—militant Islamism. The origins of that malignant ideology is political Islam and the dreams of an Islamist state and Islamic hegemony over Muslim dominated lands and for some Islamists over the western world.


Some have begun to try and unravel the mystery of the generation of homegrown terror cells- despite protestations of American Islamist organizations. The recent NYPD report on “Radicalization in the West: the Homegrown Threat” began to peel the onion of the realities behind the transformation of nonviolent Islamists into militant ones willing to die for the cause and barbarically murder innocents in the process. The LAPD recently announced a similar project to attempt to map the LA Muslim community by “assessing groups that might be susceptible to ideologically based extremism and propaganda.” In the predictable fashion of victimology the local and national Islamist groups including CAIR and MPAC immediately objected to the plan while providing little to no reassurance to American security agencies that the community would lead such an organized counter-Islamist effort on its own.


They know all too well that behind those who commit terror are not only organizations and individuals which have names that they generally refuse to specify in their condemnations but they are also driven by a political motivation which they refuse to intellectually deconstruct.

Simply denying that terror has anything to do with Islam or Muslims misses the diagnosis and thus avoids the treatment. However, realizing that Islamist terror arises from the transnational goals of political Islam will awaken Muslims to their responsibility of defeating Islamism from within the faith.


Militancy may be a tool of only a very small portion of Islamists who accept violence. But ultimately activists and specifically youth who are driven by an understanding that the “Islamic state” is superior to any other form of governance on earth will always remain apologists for the cause of militants whether they believe in the means or not. A far more effective treatment in the prevention of radicalism in the name of Islam would be to evaluate the origins, education, and inculcation of political Islam in the Muslim community and replace it with a different narrative separating the political from the spiritual from a very young age.


Muslim Youth of Islamic Schools - Finding an American nationalist Identity


The only logical way to defeat the transnational goals of political Islam in a lasting manner is to separate the national identity of Muslim youth, their Americanism, from their spiritual identity- Islam. But this must come from within the Islamic consciousness. I was able to do this in my youth growing up in a small Midwestern town, going to public schools, and learning my faith from devout conservative Muslim parents who had never equivocated about their American nationalism. They freely admitted to me and my siblings in our youth all the benefits of freedom given to them as they embraced American nationalism and the complete failure of Syrian nationalism in their own youth. There was never an equivocation in that battle of ideas.


I also somehow learned to internalize enlightenment ideas and to separate my faith identity and my personal relationship with God from my national and political identity as an American citizen. If I have learned anything as an anti-Islamist activist in the Muslim community over the past 25 years is that youth who have not been irrevocably conditioned by Islamists are very receptive to this separation. Established Islamists are, however, as a rule intransigent in their willingness to look upon national identity through anything but a collectivist Muslim lens- the lens of the ummah (the Muslim nation). If Muslim youth are unable to wrap themselves comfortably in the warmth of American freedom and nationalism, defeating Islamism, whether militant or not, will be nearly impossible. One indicator would be to compare the number of American Muslim youth who join the American military out of parochial Islamic schools versus those who do so out of public schools.


While all Americans should be free to establish parochial schools. They should not be insulated from public scrutiny. While my personal belief is that Islamic schools contribute to the segregation and isolation of Muslims psychologically and physically, I will always endorse their right to exist especially as spiritual institutions. However, our national security interests demand that we not allow them to become incubators for political Islam where they can influence and control impressionable youth.


# #

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor M. Zuhdi Jasser is the founder and Chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix Arizona. He is a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, a physician in private practice, and a community activist.

He can be reached at Zuhdi@aifdemocracy.org
read full author bio here

If you are a reporter or producer who is interested in receiving more information about this writer or this article, please email your request to pr@familysecuritymatters.org.

Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of The Family Security Foundation, Inc.