Tag Archives: terrorism

Roundup

Campaign financing tidbits you may not hear about from the mainstream media:

1. Richest hedge fund managers gave 98% of contributions to Democrats

2. Gulf Oil Spill: Guess Who Was The Top BP Donation Recipient?

. . . do you think Obama will return the money as he goes on his demonization bender against BP? Will the media call for the return of the money? Will anyone on the Left whine about Obama being a big oil man, like they would if Bush was president? Yeah, right, on all three.

Obama was also the top recipient of Exxon Mobile money in 2008. And Chevron. Hmm.

Obama using the word “teabaggers” now — Classy.  Now why would someone committed to civil discourse use a completely irrelevant pejorative referring to a largely homosexual sex act?  Is he homophobic?

Why I hate the pill — interesting read on the not-well-communicated side effects.  Hat tip: Jill Stanek

The Bigotry of ‘Progress’ — well reasoned post on (oxymoronic) same-sex marriage by the Other McCain

Insofar as homosexuals sought only liberty and tolerance, they met little resistance, as even the most conservative Americans take pride in their “live and let live” attitude. Yet Americans balked when it was argued that the logical extension of such tolerance required recognition of homosexuality as the basis of a legal and political identity.

Amazingly stupid comments speculating on the identity of the Times Square bomber

So according to Bloomberg, Dreyfuss and Brewer, the profile of the guy who attempted to bomb Time Square was:

– Home Grown (born and/or raised and/or naturalized in the U.S.)

– Mentally Ill

– Has a Political Agenda (presumably against the Obama administration)

– Dislikes Obama’s Health Care bill

– Tea Party Member

– Anti-Government Right

– Bigotted against people from other countries and people with different skin colors

Weird.  It turns out that the guy in custody ACTUALLY fits THIS profile:

– From Pakistan and naturalized a year ago

– Received training in Waziristan

– Has political/religious agenda (against the U.S.)

– Hasn’t mentioned his opinion (and presumably doesn’t care) about Obama’s health care bill

– Hasn’t mentioned any support for (and presumably disagrees with) the Tea Party movement

– Is certainly anti-U.S. government, but not in the way they mean

– Seems to be bigoted against people in the U.S., no matter their skin color or background

Roundup

“Holy Anorexia” and Sanctified Starvation — Yikes!  This is a difficult but important topic, as it shows what can happen when people ignore or don’t have access to the word of God and start making things up based on personal experiences. 

Catherine of Siena was bulimic. So was Theresa of Avila.
. . .

They were not reading God’s Word, which was forbidden at the time, but instead were relying heavily on their subjective, ecstatic experience. Furthermore, the notion that they, as sinners, could participate by physical suffering in Christ’s redemption of humanity belies an almost incredible hubris on their part.

If the election of Barack Obama was to improve our standing with the world, why were homegrown terror plots on the rise in 2009?

Our approach to terrorism is fatally flawed by its priority of political correctness.  We should do as the Israelis do and screen for terrorists, not weapons.  And we can’t be naive about the terrorists’ “If at first you don’t succeed…” approach:

You ever hear what the IRA once told the British? “We only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky all the time.” That’s how terrorists think: stop them nineteen times and they’ll keep coming back for a twentieth bite at the apple.  That doesn’t mean that they can’t be deterred or suppressed; but you can’t do either by waiting for them to commit a crime and then arrest them all.  You do either by finding them and killing everybody who doesn’t surrender, and by detaining the ones who do so that you can interrogate them and get more intelligence about their compatriots still remaining alive and at liberty.

Here’s a surprise: President Obama’s appeasement to Russia didn’t work

Give people the benefit of the doubt. You can always overreact later.

I sometimes use the line in the title with my team at work and when giving leadership and management presentations.  It is a corollary to the one bad argument can undermine ten good arguments truism.  Charity about the motives of others is usually a win-win proposition, and you don’t want to lose credibility by making mistakes.  When performing audits or investigations we don’t want to make false accusations.  Our initial assessments are almost always right, but if you are wrong people will remember it for a long time and not take your views as seriously as you’d like. 

The reactions to the Ft. Hood shootings make an interesting study.  Many were so quick to avoid assuming it wasn’t Islamic terrorism that they swung the pendulum too far the other way and insisted that it wasn’t.  They had no evidence for that, and it appears that they were wrong.  They had no qualms about saying it was probably post-traumatic stress disorder, even though the guy had never experienced the original stress that this malady requires.  If it is good not to speculate, then why speculate about potentially non-Islamic related causes?

Side note:  Looks like the Army dropped the ball on this one.  I wonder how much political correctness influenced it?  This isn’t religious discrimination, it is common sense.  Regardless of your type of organization, you should not employ members of ideological groups bent on your destruction.  If churches would have booted false teachers 100 years ago we wouldn’t have the anti-Christian nonsense taught in countless churches today.

Side note 2: Hopefully many peaceful Muslims and Muslim countries around the world will denounce these actions.  The Koran does indeed teach to harm enemies of Islam, but I am grateful for disobedient Muslims who don’t follow that teaching.  If they have created a new religion that ignores those teachings, good for them.  They should call out their “false teachers” the same way that I and others freely point out the errors of fake Christians.  You do your movement no good to have false unity with those who believe the opposite of what you do.

Oh, and there is a is just one major problem with the the peaceful Islam message: You can never be completely sure if those denouncements are authentic because Muslims are allowed to lie to advance their faith.  So CAIR’s repudiation of the actions might be advancing a distorted (i.e., better) view of Islam. Or they might be advancing the real Islam and just using their free ticket to lie.