Friday, March 9, 2012
THE ELECTRIC DC CAR TEST
It seems as if the Obama Administration will mainly be remembered for two things. Turning over the entire Middle East to the Muslim Brotherhood and badly mishandling the automotive industry.
Controlling what cars people own and how they work is a basic means of social control. Trying to seize control of the industry was a golden opportunity for the nudgers to nudge us into our corner. But the post-bailout GM is acting like the pre-bailout GM, senselessly buying up pieces of foreign car companies that it doesn't actually need, but this time it's doing it in the name of the sustainable energy mantra.
Corporate buying sprees are usually about two things, an incompetent CEO trying to outrace failure with a spurt of activity that convinces the shareholders that he might really be a visionary by picking up companies which are a bad fit (see AOL/Time Warner or AOL/Huffington Post) and they're about a company that can't move its product trying to monopolize the marketplace figuring that people will have to buy its products if it owns a piece of all the manufacturers. All it really does is pile up massive amounts of debt.
This is the same model used by Obama in his expansion of the government, which just goes to show you that the critics who think he couldn't make it in the business world are wrong. He could run GM and he has run GM. And what's bad for GM is bad for America and what's bad for America is bad for GM.
Meanwhile the subsidized electric car industry isn't running too well either. The Volt's problems are well known. This week the Karma had a well publicized Consumer Reports blowout. It joins a long list of stimulus funds recipient electric car companies and battery manufacturers that have failed.
The Fisker Karma is an apt metaphor for the Obama Administration. It's hideously expensive, heavily hyped and doesn't work.
The problem here isn't the technology. Given time, patience and investors, the technological problems can be licked. But a free market variation of Soviet central planning is going to produce only marginally better results.
The stimulus was used to drive a command economy where the products that the government wanted to see made, got made. And that was doomed from the start.
The government can get things done by throwing enough money and manpower at it. That is how we got to the moon. It will however do so inefficiently with huge cost overruns and major problems. The technology will not be mature, there will be serious unexpected problems and the process will be difficult to sustain over the long run.
Product development is a process that requires the whole cycle of striving, testing, failure, reevaluation and eventual success that has been followed by every company trying to make a revolutionary product. Plunking a bunch of laptop batteries into a car, rolling out a snazzy marketing campaign and taking in stimulus money does not lead to a working electric car that everyone will want. It leads to publicized failure.
We're not going to get an electric car by throwing a bunch of money at electric car companies. We're not going to get one by hiking the price of gasoline and then throwing in more tax breaks to electric car buyers. All this social and economic control does not create a working product.
If we are going to have a popular and affordable electric car that works well, it is not going to come from stimulus funds. It will follow the old Ford path, it will be revolutionary because it has met the challenges of the marketplace. Not because it has a sugar daddy in D.C.
WARMONGERING
Following the official vocabulary of our approved class, talk about a genocidal state developing nuclear weapons is 'warmongering'. But Friends of Syria and Kony2012 are positively humanitarian. Iraq was warmongering, but Libya was humanitarian.
When liberals want to bomb places or kill people, it's always humanitarian and never warmongering. It's never even a war. But mention Israel and Iran, and unlike the chummy Friends of Syria and Kony2012, you're a... warmonger.
END OF THE LINE
Nearly twenty years ago when the South Korean president arrived in Washington, President Clinton treated him to nearly the same remarks that Obama just offered Netanyahu, complete with all the right noises about “America’s unyielding commitment to South Korea’s security” and making it clear to North Korea that it faces international isolation and the wrath of the international community if it should go on with its nuclear program.
Netanyahu has no interest in seeing the same “firm resolve” for achieving a diplomatic solution that was applied to North Korea allow Iran to become a nuclear power. That was something he emphasized in both his speech to AIPAC and in his remarks to Obama. And that is the ultimate bottom line.
The only thing riding on this for Obama is his election if some Jews in Florida go rogue in a close race. But for Netanyahu, who has lost elections before, this is about being on the front lines of a nuclear war. Netanyahu is a politician, with all the flaws of the breed, but he also sees the abyss and unlike Obama, he is capable of putting country first.
....you can see my entire article, At the Poker Table with Bibi and Barack at Front Page
WE'VE GOT YOUR BACK
But just like his election AIPAC speech included support for a united Jerusalem that got quickly walked back and so we quickly switched to...
So it was a statement of caring deeply about how Obama cares deeply about the things that he cares deeply about. And then came...
Oddly he doesn't seem nearly as invested in finding a diplomatic solution with Assad or Kony, but some war drums should be beaten and some shouldn't. But his diplomacy got the stamp of approval from no lesser figure than the Supreme Leader.
No doubt about it. O has got Iran's back.
GOOD MUSLIM BITCHES
The media is officially in mourning for the cancellation of All-American Muslim, a show no one watched, but which was praised for showing Muslims in a positive light. That same media is also sneering at Christians for objecting to the new ABC show, Good Christian Bitches.
Can anyone imagine a media landscape where a show like Good Muslim Bitches ever got aired or where the idea would get to stage 1. It wouldn't happen.
Just like if you put up posters attacking Christianity or Judaism in your window, you would be a bold social critic. But do it for Islam and you get a 12 month jail sentence. Not in Pakistan, but in the UK.
We aren't told what the content was, as in medieval blasphemy trials or the justice system of the Muslim world, it's too blasphemous for us to see. We must take the court's word for it. According to one media outlet, "Many were offensive – attacking both the prophet Mohammed and the Muslim religion."
There was a time when you read that sort of thing coming out of a Saudi trial and you shook your head at the absurdity of this still going on in the modern world. But no longer. Now we can enjoy Sharia even in the West.
Just think of it... in full public view. Where anyone could see his hideously offensive blasphemy. Why bother reading 1984 when we're already living it?
But if Darren Conway had only headed to Hollywood and directed his talents toward attacking other religions, he could have his own TV show on ABC or an art exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art.
THE JIHAD VS THE NYPD
The NYPD has 1200 men and an annual budget of 330 million dollars focused on defeating terrorists. While the Obama era FBI has put a greater focus on “corporate fraud,” “financial institution fraud” and “health care fraud,” infiltrating “online pharmacies“ and “nursing homes,” the NYPD is still vigilant because it’s their city.
Nor can the NYPD confine itself to the five boroughs. The September 11 hijackers were outside NYPD jurisdiction until they entered New York airspace. The World Trade Center bombers came out of Jersey City. Local is good enough for small scale terrorist attacks, but the first sign of a large scale terrorist attack orchestrated out of Boston or across the river in New Jersey may be the rising flames and smoke over a New York landmark.
In Trenton, New Jersey’s Attorney General met with Muslim leaders demanding action, including the local chair of CAIR, an organization that remains an unindicted terrorist conspirator. In Chicago, Newark’s former police director, met with Muslims and promised that there would be no blanket surveillance. Back home in New York City, radical leftist mayoral candidate John Liu, whose campaign treasurer was recently charged with fraud and who appears to have been the beneficiary of a lot of donations that have come out of thin air, condemned the surveillance. He was one of the few to do so.
In New York City support for the surveillance is apolitical to a surprising extent. Mayor Bloomberg, usually a vocal advocate of Muslim causes, has been equally vocal in defending the NYPD. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, so far to the left that he all but promised Al Sharpton an office in Albany, has declined to investigate the NYPD. The likely Democratic successors to Bloomberg remained equally mum. Even in a liberal town, no one besides the Associated Press, which makes its headquarters on the West Side, places political correctness over another September 11.
... you can see my full article at Front Page Magazine
I'M OFFENDED THAT WE'VE EVEN HAVING THIS DISCUSSION
Forget about being offended by specific statements, the new hot trendy liberal thing is to be even having the discussion. Landsberg-Fluke is one example, here's another local one.
To recap the madness of De Blasio, a radical leftist, he's offended that we're even having a discussion about whether the government should provide scholarships to illegal aliens.
He's not offended that it's being denied, he's offended that the question is even being raised.He's offended that "private groups" have to provide free scholarships, instead of the government providing them at taxpayer expense, to people who have no right to be in the country.
Furthermore it's hardly at private expense as the Public Advocate is an elected city office, De Blasio draws a salary paid for by taxpayers. And don't get the idea that these are educational scholarships, this is community organizer training.
The Dream Fellowships have as their goal
Oddly there was a time when major urban politicians didn't talk like they wanted to be Che or draw their mission vocabulary from Soviet propaganda. There was also a time when they could be disagreed with without offending them by even having this discussion.
VICTORY IN AFGHANISTAN AT LAST...
...for the Taliban.
...and it is. How can you argue with Shariah?
As we all know Islam is progressive and human rights oriented. It's the only feminist religion known to man. We also know that much of the Taliban is secretly moderate and just waiting to rush in and join the moderate Karzai regime. So Obama hath said and so it must be.
Some Islamophobic Afghani women appear to be concerned about this, but there is no reason to be. Sharia is just wonderful and soon we'll be able to enjoy it locally.
Even this edict's coverage is being widely distorted. Here's an underreported aspect of it.
Read this twice and you'll understand everything you need to know about the Islamic attitude toward women.
This doesn't change as much as you would think. Tribal areas never stopped running this way while the elite in Kabul do what they like, as is the case throughout the Muslim world. That too will change once the Taliban are back in Kabul.
While the media plays up feel good stories about Afghan women learning to shoot hoops or box or practice martial arts, this is the reality for most of the misbegotten country.
It's not unusual at all, the reporter just hasn't come up with the correct terminology. Slaves can be charged with kidnapping, because they are property. So can women under Islam.
...deceptively benign. Much like Islam.
But don't worry there are Afghani policewomen. With actual guns.
...want to rebuild Afghanistan? Try a large shovel and a big pile of dirt.
GETTING READY FOR THE RECONQUISTA
I suppose if the UK goes downhill enough, the clash of civs will be fought with cavalry and bowmen. The source and basis for this love of archery by Mohammed goes unmentioned as one of those things that reputable news outlets like the BBC need not be concerned with.
But here are some cheerful possibilities.
"It has been narrated on the authority of Ibn Amir who said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) say-and he was delivering a sermon from the pulpit: Prepare to meet them with as much strength as you can afford. Beware, strength consists in archery. Beware, strength consists in archery. Beware, strength consists in archery." (Sahih Muslim 020: 4711)
"I heard the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) say: Allah, Most High, will cause three persons to enter Paradise for one arrow: the maker when he has a good motive in making it, the one who shoots it, and the one who hands it; so shoot and ride, but your shooting is dearer to me than your riding. Everything with which a man amuses himself is vain except three (things): a man's training of his horse, his playing with his wife, and his shooting with his bow and arrow." (Sahih Muslim 14:2507)
Of course we must once again mention that Islam is a Religion of Peace.
You do have to give old Mo credit for understanding the tactical importance of archery. You can't abduct and rape women, until you manage to defeat the armies of your foe. Like many rapists, Mohammed was quite methodical about the process. But he also understood that fooling infidels is even more important than archery.
There's two ways to shoot a man with a bow. In the front or in the back. Mohammed and his latter day successors always preferred the back.
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET OBAMA
COSTELLO: Okay, so it's 16% unemployed.
ABBOTT: No, that's 9%...
COSTELLO: Wait a minute. Is it 9% or 16%?
ABBOTT: 9% are unemployed. 16% are out of work.
COSTELLO: IF you are out of work you are unemployed.
ABBOTT: No, you can't count the "Out of Work" as the unemployed. You have to look for work to be unemployed.
COSTELLO: BUT THEY ARE OUT OF WORK!
ABBOTT: No, you miss my point.
COSTELLO: What point?
ABBOTT: Someone who doesn't look for work, can't be counted with those who look for work. It wouldn't be fair.
COSTELLO: To whom?
ABBOTT: The unemployed.
... see the full skit at American Digest
THE BUDGET THAT ATE AMERICA
Give Obama a chance, he can do better. By next month it can be 300 billion.
THE ROUNDUP
...the joy of helping people at gunpoint... is that you can celebrate your own oppression as moral. You're not being oppressed, you're being elevated by your moral superiors.
Lost toys, lost boys and lost childhoods.
Power through, and fight on.
Muslim have always been part of our history. Really.
Occupy the Money
Obama's kosher baloney
About that poll you're seeing hyped everywhere which claims Israelis oppose action on Iran. It has as much credibility as its pollsters.
Shibley Telhami is a Brookings fellow, a liberal think tank with major cash infusions from bigwig dem donor Saban. Worse still this poll comes from the Dahaf Institute, with a list of polls that has Israelis backing Obama and the left on everything.
In 2009, they claimed the majority of Israelis "Support Obama's Settlement Policy" and that they were backing the Geneva Initiative. Another Dahaf poll claimed that Israelis support Obama over Republican candidates. The polls are a load of crap to put it politely, they clash with actual legitimate polls and the fake 19 percent number is now being hyped by a media which does nothing but repeat the talking points of Obama and his backers.
THE ELECTRIC DC CAR TEST
It seems as if the Obama Administration will mainly be remembered for two things. Turning over the entire Middle East to the Muslim Brotherhood and badly mishandling the automotive industry.
Controlling what cars people own and how they work is a basic means of social control. Trying to seize control of the industry was a golden opportunity for the nudgers to nudge us into our corner. But the post-bailout GM is acting like the pre-bailout GM, senselessly buying up pieces of foreign car companies that it doesn't actually need, but this time it's doing it in the name of the sustainable energy mantra.
Corporate buying sprees are usually about two things, an incompetent CEO trying to outrace failure with a spurt of activity that convinces the shareholders that he might really be a visionary by picking up companies which are a bad fit (see AOL/Time Warner or AOL/Huffington Post) and they're about a company that can't move its product trying to monopolize the marketplace figuring that people will have to buy its products if it owns a piece of all the manufacturers. All it really does is pile up massive amounts of debt.
This is the same model used by Obama in his expansion of the government, which just goes to show you that the critics who think he couldn't make it in the business world are wrong. He could run GM and he has run GM. And what's bad for GM is bad for America and what's bad for America is bad for GM.
Meanwhile the subsidized electric car industry isn't running too well either. The Volt's problems are well known. This week the Karma had a well publicized Consumer Reports blowout. It joins a long list of stimulus funds recipient electric car companies and battery manufacturers that have failed.
The Fisker Karma is an apt metaphor for the Obama Administration. It's hideously expensive, heavily hyped and doesn't work.
The problem here isn't the technology. Given time, patience and investors, the technological problems can be licked. But a free market variation of Soviet central planning is going to produce only marginally better results.
The stimulus was used to drive a command economy where the products that the government wanted to see made, got made. And that was doomed from the start.
The government can get things done by throwing enough money and manpower at it. That is how we got to the moon. It will however do so inefficiently with huge cost overruns and major problems. The technology will not be mature, there will be serious unexpected problems and the process will be difficult to sustain over the long run.
Product development is a process that requires the whole cycle of striving, testing, failure, reevaluation and eventual success that has been followed by every company trying to make a revolutionary product. Plunking a bunch of laptop batteries into a car, rolling out a snazzy marketing campaign and taking in stimulus money does not lead to a working electric car that everyone will want. It leads to publicized failure.
We're not going to get an electric car by throwing a bunch of money at electric car companies. We're not going to get one by hiking the price of gasoline and then throwing in more tax breaks to electric car buyers. All this social and economic control does not create a working product.
If we are going to have a popular and affordable electric car that works well, it is not going to come from stimulus funds. It will follow the old Ford path, it will be revolutionary because it has met the challenges of the marketplace. Not because it has a sugar daddy in D.C.
WARMONGERING
Following the official vocabulary of our approved class, talk about a genocidal state developing nuclear weapons is 'warmongering'. But Friends of Syria and Kony2012 are positively humanitarian. Iraq was warmongering, but Libya was humanitarian.
When liberals want to bomb places or kill people, it's always humanitarian and never warmongering. It's never even a war. But mention Israel and Iran, and unlike the chummy Friends of Syria and Kony2012, you're a... warmonger.
Nearly twenty years ago when the South Korean president arrived in Washington, President Clinton treated him to nearly the same remarks that Obama just offered Netanyahu, complete with all the right noises about “America’s unyielding commitment to South Korea’s security” and making it clear to North Korea that it faces international isolation and the wrath of the international community if it should go on with its nuclear program.
Netanyahu has no interest in seeing the same “firm resolve” for achieving a diplomatic solution that was applied to North Korea allow Iran to become a nuclear power. That was something he emphasized in both his speech to AIPAC and in his remarks to Obama. And that is the ultimate bottom line.
The only thing riding on this for Obama is his election if some Jews in Florida go rogue in a close race. But for Netanyahu, who has lost elections before, this is about being on the front lines of a nuclear war. Netanyahu is a politician, with all the flaws of the breed, but he also sees the abyss and unlike Obama, he is capable of putting country first.
....you can see my entire article, At the Poker Table with Bibi and Barack at Front Page
WE'VE GOT YOUR BACK
And as I’ve said to the Prime Minister in every single one of our meetings, the United States will always have Israel’s back...
But just like his election AIPAC speech included support for a united Jerusalem that got quickly walked back and so we quickly switched to...
“not a military doctrine that we were laying out for any particular military action. . . . It was a restatement of our consistent position that the security of Israel is something I deeply care about . . . [and] confirms how deeply we care about it."
So it was a statement of caring deeply about how Obama cares deeply about the things that he cares deeply about. And then came...
President Obama on Tuesday rebuked Republicans on the presidential campaign trail and in Congress for "beating the drums of war" in criticizing his efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis over Iran's nuclear program.
Oddly he doesn't seem nearly as invested in finding a diplomatic solution with Assad or Kony, but some war drums should be beaten and some shouldn't. But his diplomacy got the stamp of approval from no lesser figure than the Supreme Leader.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Thursday praised US President Barack Obama for recent remarks in which he warned against "beating the drums of war."
No doubt about it. O has got Iran's back.
GOOD MUSLIM BITCHES
The media is officially in mourning for the cancellation of All-American Muslim, a show no one watched, but which was praised for showing Muslims in a positive light. That same media is also sneering at Christians for objecting to the new ABC show, Good Christian Bitches.
Can anyone imagine a media landscape where a show like Good Muslim Bitches ever got aired or where the idea would get to stage 1. It wouldn't happen.
Just like if you put up posters attacking Christianity or Judaism in your window, you would be a bold social critic. But do it for Islam and you get a 12 month jail sentence. Not in Pakistan, but in the UK.
We aren't told what the content was, as in medieval blasphemy trials or the justice system of the Muslim world, it's too blasphemous for us to see. We must take the court's word for it. According to one media outlet, "Many were offensive – attacking both the prophet Mohammed and the Muslim religion."
There was a time when you read that sort of thing coming out of a Saudi trial and you shook your head at the absurdity of this still going on in the modern world. But no longer. Now we can enjoy Sharia even in the West.
"Later that day police attended the premises and found 17 posters and images in the front window in full public view. The majority of the displayed posters and images were undoubtedly offensive to the Islamic faith. Conway was arrested at the scene and taken into police custody."
Just think of it... in full public view. Where anyone could see his hideously offensive blasphemy. Why bother reading 1984 when we're already living it?
But if Darren Conway had only headed to Hollywood and directed his talents toward attacking other religions, he could have his own TV show on ABC or an art exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art.
The NYPD has 1200 men and an annual budget of 330 million dollars focused on defeating terrorists. While the Obama era FBI has put a greater focus on “corporate fraud,” “financial institution fraud” and “health care fraud,” infiltrating “online pharmacies“ and “nursing homes,” the NYPD is still vigilant because it’s their city.
Nor can the NYPD confine itself to the five boroughs. The September 11 hijackers were outside NYPD jurisdiction until they entered New York airspace. The World Trade Center bombers came out of Jersey City. Local is good enough for small scale terrorist attacks, but the first sign of a large scale terrorist attack orchestrated out of Boston or across the river in New Jersey may be the rising flames and smoke over a New York landmark.
In Trenton, New Jersey’s Attorney General met with Muslim leaders demanding action, including the local chair of CAIR, an organization that remains an unindicted terrorist conspirator. In Chicago, Newark’s former police director, met with Muslims and promised that there would be no blanket surveillance. Back home in New York City, radical leftist mayoral candidate John Liu, whose campaign treasurer was recently charged with fraud and who appears to have been the beneficiary of a lot of donations that have come out of thin air, condemned the surveillance. He was one of the few to do so.
In New York City support for the surveillance is apolitical to a surprising extent. Mayor Bloomberg, usually a vocal advocate of Muslim causes, has been equally vocal in defending the NYPD. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, so far to the left that he all but promised Al Sharpton an office in Albany, has declined to investigate the NYPD. The likely Democratic successors to Bloomberg remained equally mum. Even in a liberal town, no one besides the Associated Press, which makes its headquarters on the West Side, places political correctness over another September 11.
... you can see my full article at Front Page Magazine
I'M OFFENDED THAT WE'VE EVEN HAVING THIS DISCUSSION
Forget about being offended by specific statements, the new hot trendy liberal thing is to be even having the discussion. Landsberg-Fluke is one example, here's another local one.
With New York’s proposed Dream Act at a near standstill in the State Legislature, advocacy groups took matters into their own hands and financed scholarships for 10 illegal immigrants... with the support of the Fund for Public Advocacy, a nonprofit arm of the office of the city’s public advocate, Bill de Blasio.
The New York program was announced at a news conference, where Mr. De Blasio, a likely contender for mayor, decried the need for private groups to fill in the gaps in aid to students who are in the United States illegally. “We all have to make up for the madness of our national policies,” he said. “As an American and the grandson of immigrants, I’m offended we even have to be standing here having this discussion.”
To recap the madness of De Blasio, a radical leftist, he's offended that we're even having a discussion about whether the government should provide scholarships to illegal aliens.
He's not offended that it's being denied, he's offended that the question is even being raised.He's offended that "private groups" have to provide free scholarships, instead of the government providing them at taxpayer expense, to people who have no right to be in the country.
Furthermore it's hardly at private expense as the Public Advocate is an elected city office, De Blasio draws a salary paid for by taxpayers. And don't get the idea that these are educational scholarships, this is community organizer training.
The Dream Fellowships have as their goal
To provide leadership development and training for Dream Act students through internships with community organizations that advocate for immigrant rights;
To provide social justice organizations with talented and capable immigrant student activists;
To provide scholarships for immigrant students to pursue their educational goals, and to advance social justice activism among immigrant youth in New York City.
Oddly there was a time when major urban politicians didn't talk like they wanted to be Che or draw their mission vocabulary from Soviet propaganda. There was also a time when they could be disagreed with without offending them by even having this discussion.
...for the Taliban.
President Hamid Karzai‘s Tuesday remarks backing the Ulema Council's document, which allows husbands to beat wives under certain circumstances and encourages segregation of the sexes, is seen as part of his outreach to insurgents like the Taliban.
Among the rules: Women should not travel without a male guardian and women should not mingle with strange men in places like schools, markets or offices. Beating one's wife is prohibited only if there is no "Shariah-compliant reason," it said, referring to the principles of Islamic law.
Asked about the code of conduct at a press conference in the capital, Karzai said it was in line with Islamic law and was written in consultation with Afghan women's groups.
"The clerics' council of Afghanistan did not put any limitations on women," Karzai said, adding: "It is the Shariah law of all Muslims and all Afghans."
...and it is. How can you argue with Shariah?
The edict went on to say that women would wear "full Islamic hijab", should respect polygamy — Islam allows a man to take up to four wives — and comply with Shariah law on divorce, which severely restricts women's rights.
As we all know Islam is progressive and human rights oriented. It's the only feminist religion known to man. We also know that much of the Taliban is secretly moderate and just waiting to rush in and join the moderate Karzai regime. So Obama hath said and so it must be.
Some Islamophobic Afghani women appear to be concerned about this, but there is no reason to be. Sharia is just wonderful and soon we'll be able to enjoy it locally.
Even this edict's coverage is being widely distorted. Here's an underreported aspect of it.
Last Friday, the Council, Afghanistan's highest Islamic authority, issued a non-binding edict saying that women were worth less than men — a statement released by Karzai's office and then endorsed by the president on Tuesday.
"Men are fundamental and women are secondary," it said, adding women should avoid "mingling with strange men in various social activities such as education, in bazaars, in offices and other aspects of life".
Read this twice and you'll understand everything you need to know about the Islamic attitude toward women.
This doesn't change as much as you would think. Tribal areas never stopped running this way while the elite in Kabul do what they like, as is the case throughout the Muslim world. That too will change once the Taliban are back in Kabul.
While the media plays up feel good stories about Afghan women learning to shoot hoops or box or practice martial arts, this is the reality for most of the misbegotten country.
Sakina's eyes are dark wells of despair that lighten only briefly when the 20-year-old mother looks at her nine-month-old son, Mirwais.
Mother and child are inhabitants of the Badam Bagh women's prison in Kabul, Afghanistan. Here children born to inmates share their mothers' sentences.
"They will send me to my father's house," she says, her voice barely above a whisper as she speaks to a reporter permitted a rare glimpse inside Afghanistan's criminal justice system for women.
"He will kill me for sure. Then he will kill, or sell, my little boy, " said Sakina.
Sakina's imprisonment stems from her attempts to evade a uniquely medieval form of restitution practiced in tribal courts and known as ba'ad. It is Afghanistan's version of restorative justice in which women and girls are bartered from one family to another as a way to settle a dispute.
"In the tribal courts, the first sacrifice is women," Sirran said. "Always. If there is a fight for land, for water, if there is violence, a girl can be given in ba'ad to settle these things."
Sakina is in prison for the heinous crime of kidnapping. What makes her case a bit unusual is that the kidnapping victim was Sakina herself.
It's not unusual at all, the reporter just hasn't come up with the correct terminology. Slaves can be charged with kidnapping, because they are property. So can women under Islam.
To assuage affronts to honor, to compensate for financial loss, even to reconcile families of murderers and victims, jirgas often award a young girl to the affronted party in the practice known as "ba'ad."
The rationale is deceptively benign: uniting two families by blood is supposed to smooth over the enmity, preventing feuds that often drag on for years, even into new generations.
But the reality is quite different. A young girl who is given in ba'ad all too often becomes the scapegoat for her new family's grief and anger. They take out their rage on the helpless girl, who is usually wed to a male member of the new family, regardless of age or temperament.
In Sakina's case, the match was more than inappropriate: she was a child of five. Her "fiance" was 70.
...deceptively benign. Much like Islam.
But don't worry there are Afghani policewomen. With actual guns.
So why would female police officers in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif be ashamed to admit they wear the badge?
"Except my very close family members, no one really knows that I am a police officer," said one woman at a NATO training session.
The woman, who asked not to give her name, says she tells most of her family that she works with a foreign aid organization. That's because the rumors about sexual abuse in Mazar-e-Sharif's police force are so widespread that many of these women are ashamed to say they're cops.
She says on one occasion her house was invaded by a group of men who stayed all night, raping her in front of her small children. Ann, who is married, recognized some of them as police. She didn't report the incident for fear of public disgrace, and because she believes the police chief already knew.
A second woman in her mid-30s, Jane — also not her real name — says she was also raped by her superiors on the force after the threat of losing her job — the only income supporting her several children.
"Put it this way: If there is a young woman, and she wants to remain in her post, she accepts being used this way," said Jane.
The women say abuse is widespread across Mazar-e-Sharif's police force and that female officers are practically "trafficked" when they are transferred from one district to another.
Another woman, in her late-30s, arrived for an interview hiding her police uniform under her burqa. She says that after almost 10 years on the force, police officers stopped demanding sex from her but forced her to procure prostitutes.
"Anywhere you ask for a job in the police force, they either ask you to give yourself or bring them girls," she said. She named several policewomen who act as madams for cops in the city.
...want to rebuild Afghanistan? Try a large shovel and a big pile of dirt.
GETTING READY FOR THE RECONQUISTA
Islamic archery revived in Surrey mosque
Following the Sunnah of Muhammad, Muslims and mosques in the southern British country of Surry are reviving the centuries-old sport of horseback archery at weekly sessions which attract many young Muslims.
I suppose if the UK goes downhill enough, the clash of civs will be fought with cavalry and bowmen. The source and basis for this love of archery by Mohammed goes unmentioned as one of those things that reputable news outlets like the BBC need not be concerned with.
But here are some cheerful possibilities.
"It has been narrated on the authority of Ibn Amir who said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) say-and he was delivering a sermon from the pulpit: Prepare to meet them with as much strength as you can afford. Beware, strength consists in archery. Beware, strength consists in archery. Beware, strength consists in archery." (Sahih Muslim 020: 4711)
"I heard the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) say: Allah, Most High, will cause three persons to enter Paradise for one arrow: the maker when he has a good motive in making it, the one who shoots it, and the one who hands it; so shoot and ride, but your shooting is dearer to me than your riding. Everything with which a man amuses himself is vain except three (things): a man's training of his horse, his playing with his wife, and his shooting with his bow and arrow." (Sahih Muslim 14:2507)
Of course we must once again mention that Islam is a Religion of Peace.
You do have to give old Mo credit for understanding the tactical importance of archery. You can't abduct and rape women, until you manage to defeat the armies of your foe. Like many rapists, Mohammed was quite methodical about the process. But he also understood that fooling infidels is even more important than archery.
There's two ways to shoot a man with a bow. In the front or in the back. Mohammed and his latter day successors always preferred the back.
COSTELLO: Okay, so it's 16% unemployed.
ABBOTT: No, that's 9%...
COSTELLO: Wait a minute. Is it 9% or 16%?
ABBOTT: 9% are unemployed. 16% are out of work.
COSTELLO: IF you are out of work you are unemployed.
ABBOTT: No, you can't count the "Out of Work" as the unemployed. You have to look for work to be unemployed.
COSTELLO: BUT THEY ARE OUT OF WORK!
ABBOTT: No, you miss my point.
COSTELLO: What point?
ABBOTT: Someone who doesn't look for work, can't be counted with those who look for work. It wouldn't be fair.
COSTELLO: To whom?
ABBOTT: The unemployed.
... see the full skit at American Digest
THE BUDGET THAT ATE AMERICA
Speaking of issues that will work against President Obama in November, this whopper of an announcement was just released: The CBO has projected that the government deficit for February 2012 will be $229 billion, making the FY2012 deficit already more than half a trillion dollars. This is the highest monthly budget deficit in history....
Give Obama a chance, he can do better. By next month it can be 300 billion.
...the joy of helping people at gunpoint... is that you can celebrate your own oppression as moral. You're not being oppressed, you're being elevated by your moral superiors.
Lost toys, lost boys and lost childhoods.
Power through, and fight on.
Muslim have always been part of our history. Really.
Occupy the Money
Who would have thought, three or four decades ago, that Communist activists and terrorists such as Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Van Jones, Anita Dunn, David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, Tom Haydn, Jane Fonda, and a gallery of other protégés, associates, appointees, and fellow travelers would become the social and political elite to formulate, determine and oversee domestic and foreign policies of the United States?
Obama's kosher baloney
About that poll you're seeing hyped everywhere which claims Israelis oppose action on Iran. It has as much credibility as its pollsters.
Shibley Telhami is a Brookings fellow, a liberal think tank with major cash infusions from bigwig dem donor Saban. Worse still this poll comes from the Dahaf Institute, with a list of polls that has Israelis backing Obama and the left on everything.
In 2009, they claimed the majority of Israelis "Support Obama's Settlement Policy" and that they were backing the Geneva Initiative. Another Dahaf poll claimed that Israelis support Obama over Republican candidates. The polls are a load of crap to put it politely, they clash with actual legitimate polls and the fake 19 percent number is now being hyped by a media which does nothing but repeat the talking points of Obama and his backers.
