Imported Articles from Little Green Footballs & Jihad Watch

(With Commentary)

I wanted to let others who have more knowledge in this particular case to speak out on it. I want to first link MSNBC comparing these six Imams being pulled off a flight to Rosa Parks and the black people fighting for racial issues. Islam is an Ideology, of which large swaths of it are violent and embrace death more than life. This has nothing to do with Rosa Parks and is probably the dumbest connection made in this currant struggle of civilization.

Okay, here we go with the quotes:

LGF (follow his links)

Just for the record, since mainstream media is utterly uninterested in it, Omar Shahin claims that Muslims did not participate in the September 11 attacks, he’s linked to KindHearts (a “charity” that was shut down because of connections to Hamas), and has admitted ties to Osama bin Laden: Minneapolis Airport Incident Update.

Jihad Watch (follow his links)

Omar Shahin is one of the imams removed from a flight in Minneapolis. He was involved with Kind Hearts, which has been closed down for its connections to Hamas. He also acknowledged a connection to Osama bin Laden in the 1990s in a September 28, 2001 story in the Arizona Republic (thanks to Austin): "Arizona Was Home to bin Laden 'Sleeper Cell,'" by Dennis Wagner and Tom Zoellner. From that story:

Arizona appears to have been the home of a "sleeper cell" of Osama bin Laden's worldwide terrorist organization, with a select group of operatives living quietly in bland apartment complexes and obtaining flight training in preparation for the Sept. 11 attacks.

The organization's known history in the state goes back nine years and scholars say the activities of at least three part-time Arizona residents fits the pattern of the al-Qaeda terrorist group.

"We can only speculate at this point, but I'm convinced the FBI is operating under the assumption that Arizona was host to an al-Qaeda cell," said Jack Williams, a professor of law at Georgia State University who has studied the group's financing methods.

[...]

Omar Shahin of the Tucson Islamic Center said members of the Tucson mosque may have helped bin Laden in the early 1990s, when he was fighting against the Russians. But that was during the Cold War when U.S. intelligence agencies were encouraging support for bin Laden.

"They (the CIA) called him a 'freedom fighter,'" Sahin said. "Then they tell us he is involved in terrorist acts, and they stopped supporting him, and we stopped."

Shahin and Saadeddin expressed doubt that Muslims were responsible for the Sept. 11 attack. They also said they don't trust much of what the FBI has divulged - including the hijackers' identities.

[...]

Shahin of the Tucson Islamic Center said more than 1,200 Muslims died in the World Trade Center catastrophe, and no genuine member of Islam would do such a thing. Nor, he added, would Muslims have gone to strip joints prior to the attack, as several of the terrorists in Florida reportedly did. As for Al-Qaeda nests in America, Shahin said, "All of these, they make it up."

Why won’t the mainstream media pick the above connections up? In one short partial-acronym – P.C. It is politically incorrect to comment on ones personal belief system (unless Protestant or Catholic).

This problem we face is a misapplication, or a misunderstanding -- I should say, in regards to what constitutes a Liberal democracy. The bulk of conservatives (not monolithic however) understand it as being applied in the sense of “classical liberalism,” the liberals since the 60’s see it being applied as “egalitarian” in conception and application. It is a relativisng of application. In short, modern America lacks what Walter Lippmann calls the public philosophy. If you are reading this and wondering why I am on this tangent, you must realize that for one to deal with this threat to our commonwealth, one must have a worldview that doesn’t contradict itself in applying subject/object distinctions to pulling Imams off of a plane.

The late Alexander Bickel calls our currant political model the “liberal contradiction model” of society. However, the ordering principle for this contract to work effectively must be outside of and above liberty and equality. This is the public philosophy Lippmann eluded to, what our country had up until the 60’s. Liberty and equality cannot, yes, cannot be the highest values of a political system because they relativize and ultimately destroy all other values… thus "making" the connection to Rosa Parks a valid connection, valid only in a relativised society that is. When we make them (liberty and equality) supreme norms, we have (as a body-politic) no set of objectively human ends that can provide answers to the questions: Liberty for what? and Equality in what?

Did you need an example of this contradictory model in action? Here it is:

~First Person: “You shouldn’t force your morality on me.”

Second Person: “Why not?”

~First Person: “Because I don’t believe in forcing morality.”

Second Person: “If you don’t believe in it, then by all means, don’t do it. Especially don’t force that moral view of yours on me.”

~First Person: “You shouldn’t push your morality on me.”

Second Person: “I’m not entirely sure what you mean by that statement. Do you mean I have no right to an opinion?”

~First Person: “You have a right to you’re opinion, but you have no right to force it on anyone.”

Second Person: “Is that your opinion?”

~First Person: “Yes.”

Second Person: “Then why are you forcing it on me?”

~First Person: “But your saying your view is right.”

Second Person: “Am I wrong?”

~First Person: “Yes.”

Second Person: “Then your saying only your view is right, which is the very thing you objected to me saying.”

~First Person: “You shouldn’t push your morality on me.”

Second Person: “Correct me if I’m misunderstanding you here, but it sounds to me like your telling me I’m wrong.”

~First Person: “You are.”

Second Person: “Well, you seem to be saying my personal moral view shouldn’t apply to other people, but that sounds suspiciously like you are applying your moral view to me. Why are you forcing your morality on me?”

PapaG

Pelosi Cleaning Up?

Pelosi is again showing Washington how she is cleaning up that city by seriously considering Hastings’s who took a bribe of $150,000. Way to go Democrats. At least he didn’t hide the money in his freezer.

Democrats Calling for the Draft Again!

I just watched a video interview of Charlie Rangel on Face the Nation, and I must say, it is unlearned jackasses like these that make me throw my hands in the air and go “UuuuhhhG!

Charlie Rangel Video

You too can see Rangel wanting to bring the Draft back (see above), even wanting to not send the draftees to Iraq, but forcing them to work seaports and the like. CRAZY! He is, let me repeat, he is introducing the bill the next session. Way to go Democrats, another stalwart bill to be introduced into Congress!

He of course got his facts wrong to top it off (nothing unusual)… what was great was that the video wasn’t done loading and I already knew why he was going to bring the draft back. He wants to bring it back partly because he thinks that if the Republicans had thought their kids would be shipped off to Iraq they wouldn’t keep the war effort up. Unfortunately for Rangel, more Republican kids from Senatorial families (sons, nephews, daughters, nieces, brothers, etc) are voluntarily joining or have joined the military.

Another piece O’ information Rangel cannot see through the political forest is that most of the volunteers are from affluent neighborhoods, as the following Washington Times (November 8, 2005) article points out:

The Heritage Foundation research paper found that a higher percentage of middle-class and upper-middle-class families have been providing enlistees for the war on Islamic militants since the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Researchers matched the ZIP codes of recruits over the past five years with federal government estimates of household incomes in those neighborhoods. Contrary to complaints from some liberal lawmakers and pundits, the data show that the poor are not shouldering the bulk of the military's need for new soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines.

The poorest neighborhoods provided 18 percent of recruits in prewar 1999 and 14.6 percent in 2003. By contrast, areas where household incomes ranged from $30,000 to $200,000 provided more than 85 percent…. About 98 percent of all enlistees from 1999 to 2003 had a high school diploma, compared with 75 percent of nonrecruits nationwide.

Sorry Charlie, your “Bumper-Sticker Slogans” aren’t working out for you to well, at least those who can type into Google the words, “military record number middle-class”, which apparently your staff cannot.

PLEASE, PLEASE Charlie, push this bill through, it will be another mark against this new majority.

Rich Getting Richer ~ Poor Getting Poorer

From a discussion elsewhere

Okay, let's move on. Another point that needs setting straight is when Jen says "the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer." Again, these bumper-sticker slogans are great if one just wishes to construct false claims for the express purpose of rejecting one political party for another. This phrase may seem right, like one I hear all the time, "the New Testament has been changed over the past 2,000-years," it has a ring of truth to it. . . but just like the political statement that preceded it, when one studies the facts, it just doesn't hold any water.

The Top 50% pay 96.54% of All Income Taxes

(The top 1% pay more than a third: 34.27%)

October 4, 2005

This is the latest data for calendar year 2003 just released in October 2005 by the Internal Revenue Service. The share of total income taxes paid by the top 1% of wage earners rose to 34.27% from 33.71% in 2002. Their income share (not just wages) rose from 16.12% to 16.77%. However, their average tax rate actually dropped from 27.25% down to 24.31%

*Data covers calendar year 2003, not fiscal year 2003
- and includes all income, not just wages, excluding Social Security

Think of it this way: less than 3-1/2 dollars out of every $100 paid in income taxes in the United States is paid by someone in the bottom 50% of wage earners. Are the top half millionaires? Noooo, more like "thousandaires." The top 50% were those individuals or couples filing jointly who earned $29,019 and up in 2003. (The top 1% earned $295,495-plus.) Americans who want to are continuing to improve their lives, and those who don't want to, aren't. Here are the wage earners in each category and the percentages they pay:

The top 1% pay over a third, 34.27% of all income taxes. (Up from 2003: 33.71%) The top 5% pay 54.36% of all income taxes (Up from 2002: 53.80%). The top 10% pay 65.84% (Up from 2002: 65.73%). The top 25% pay 83.88% (Down from 2002: 83.90%). The top 50% pay 96.54% (Up from 2002: 96.50%). The bottom 50%? They pay a paltry 3.46% of all income taxes (Down from 2002: 3.50%). The top 1% is paying nearly ten times the federal income taxes than the bottom 50%! And who earns what? The top 1% earns 16.77% of all income (2002: 16.12%). The top 5% earns 31.18% of all the income (2002: 30.55%). The top 10% earns 42.36% of all the income (2002: 41.77%); the top 25% earns 64.86% of all the income (2002: 64.37%) , and the top 50% earns 86.01% (2002: 85.77%) of all the income.

The Rich Earned Their Dough, They Didn't Inherit It (Except Ted Kennedy)

The bottom 50% is paying a tiny bit of the taxes, so you can't give them much of a tax cut by definition. Yet these are the people to whom the Democrats claim to want to give tax cuts. Remember this the next time you hear the "tax cuts for the rich" business. Understand that the so-called rich are about the only ones paying taxes anymore.

I had a conversation with a woman who identified herself as Misty on Wednesday. She claimed to be an accountant, yet she seemed unaware of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which now ensures that everyone pays some taxes. AP reports that the AMT, "designed in 1969 to ensure 155 wealthy people paid some tax," will hit "about 2.6 million of us this year and 36 million by 2010." That's because the tax isn't indexed for inflation! If your salary today would've made you mega-rich in '69, that's how you're taxed.

Misty tried the old line that all wealth is inherited. Not true. John Weicher, as a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank, wrote in his February 13, 1997 Washington Post Op-Ed, "Most of the rich have earned their wealth... Looking at the Fortune 400, quite a few even of the very richest people came from a standing start, while others inherited a small business and turned it into a giant corporation." What's happening here is not that "the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer." The numbers prove it.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Dear Chris

(from: Dinesh D'Souza, Letters to a Young Conservative, Basic Books; New York: N. Y. [2002], pp. 85-87. (Any bold text is emphasis I added.)

So, you ask, does wanting to get rich make you a bad guy? Of course not. Indeed, I would go further: The rich are in the best position to be the good guys, because only the rich have the resources to really help those who are in need. Still, despite the philanthropic advantages conferred by wealth, I am not at all surprised that your roommate is outraged by your desire to make money. Your roommate apparently believes that rich people are evil because they make money and that the government is good because it takes away some of that money. Not that liberals would put it that way. They would say that the government's job is to promote equality by redistributing resources from the rich to the poor. In my last letter, I tried to argue that this attempt is wrong-headed; here, let me argue that it is unnecessary. Indeed, I intend to show that technological capitalism - not government - is the catalyst for equality. You can consider this letter a kind of extended postscript to my previous critique of Big Government.

Whenever a Republican - be it Reagan or George W. Bush - proposes a tax cut, the liberals say, "This tax cut will mostly help the rich. " Of course tax cuts help the rich the most; the rich in this country pay most of the taxes. I wonder how many Americans know that the top 10 percent of income earners in America pay two-thirds of all income taxes. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent of income earners pay less than 5 percent of the income taxes. These statistics, which I got from the Internal Revenue Service, are of obvious relevance in determining who is going to benefit most from virtually any proposal to reduce income tax rates.

Thus if the rich guy makes $250,000 and pays $100,000 in taxes, and the (relatively) poor guy makes $40,000 and pays $5,000 in taxes, a ten percent across-the-board tax cut will cut the rich guy's taxes by $10,000 and the poor guys taxes by $500. This provokes the liberal wail, "But the rich guy is getting twenty times more than the poor guy." One does not have to be a math major to figure out that it is not even possible to cut the poor guy’s taxes by $10,000 because he pays only $5,000 in the first place. Contrary to liberal demagoguery, proportional tax cuts are just because they benefit citizens in proportion to what they have been paying in taxes.

Liberals usually oppose tax cuts and advocate higher taxes for the rich because they are convinced, as the old liberal mantra has it, that "the rich get richer while the poor get poorer." But is this really true? For the past half century, and especially for the past two decades, it has not been true in America. In reality, the rich have grown richer, and the poor have also grown richer, but not at the same pace.

Let me explain. In 1980, when Reagan was elected, America was a much more egalitarian society. According to the Census Bureau, if one earned $55,000 that year, one was in the top 5 percent of earners in the United States. That sounds amazing, but it’s true. Now, taking inflation into account, $55,000 in 1980 equals something like $75,000 today. But today if you want to be in the top 5 percent of income earners, you have to make $155,000.

What this means is that lots of people who use to be in the middle-class, or the lower middle class, have moved up. In moving up, they have increased the economic distance between themselves and the rest of the population. So, inequality is greater. But the exclusive liberal focus on inequality misses the larger picture, which shows that more and more people are moving into the ranks of the affluent class.