What Happened To That Wall?

Minnesota State Agency Offers Islamic Mortgages

For many Minnesota Muslims, it's been virtually impossible to buy a home, because Islamic law forbids the paying or charging of interest. To help close the home ownership gap among Muslim immigrants, the state's housing agency has launched a new program offering Islamic mortgages.

Islamic law does make exceptions to the ban on interest, if one's family is at stake. But the exceptions are open to interpretation and for many observant Muslims, conventional mortgages are strictly taboo.

Nawawi Sheikh is one of them. The Somali-American said he and his wife just couldn't go against their beliefs, even if it meant giving up their dream of owning a home. Still, he grew tired of moving from one rented apartment to another.

Well boo hoo, Nawai. What happened to making choices?

Here's how the mortgage, known as Murabaha financing or "cost plus sale," works:

The state buys a home and resells it to the buyer at a higher price. The down payment and monthly installments are agreed to up front at current mortgage rates.

The deal is identical to a thirty-year fixed-rate loan, except there's no additional interest, because the higher up-front price factors in payments that would have been made over the life of a traditional mortgage.

A handful of private banks and lending institutions offer Islamic mortgages in the U.S., but Minnesota Housing is the first state agency to offer such a product. The program is the brainchild of Hussein Samatar, director of the African Development Center in Minneapolis.

"The process is different, but the outcome will look the same," Samatar said. "We wanted to be as conventional as possible, while respecting the tenets of Islam."

Hey Mr. Samatar, it's not the state's business to find ways to accommodate Islam or any other religion. What happened to that "wall of separation" we hear about from the ACLU all the time? They must think it's only meant to separate Jewish or Christian religion and state. I really wouldn't have a problem with this Murabaha business if it was a private group or agency offering these "loans", but to have the State of Minnesota running this program is hypocritical at best. This program better be available to anyone in Minnesota regardless of religion.

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Brave Gays Target Elderly Woman

Restaurant Manager To Leave El Coyote Over Prop. 8 Controversy

Frontiers magazine learned Saturday Marjorie Christoffersen is stepping down as a manager at the Los Angeles restaurant El Coyote. Bill Schoeppner, a fellow manager at El Coyote who has been with the restaurant for 26 years, told Frontiers Christoffersen was also resigning as a member of El Coyote's board of directors.

“She no longer works here,” Schoeppner said on Saturday. “She just told me tonight.”

Christoffersen created a firestorm of controversy for the 77-year-old L.A. institution after local blogs broke the news she had donated $100 to the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign. Long a popular destination for the LGBT community for its cheap Mexican food and generous Margaritas, El Coyote found itself the target of boycotts and demonstrations after Christoffersen's donation went public. In a press conference hosted by the restaurant days after the news of the donation broke, Christoffersen tried to explain her donation did not have to do with animus for gay and lesbian people, but was instead tied to her Mormon faith.

I'm so proud of my brave fellow gays for bringing down Marjorie Christoffersen - that elderly pillar of homophobia. Way to go boys and girls! Putting a senior citizen out of work who donated $100 to support Prop 8 because of her religious beliefs should get us the right to marry quicker than a drag queen's snap.

Note to liberals... everything above was sarcasm.

As someone who would like to see the same legal benefits and duties of marriage extended to gays and lesbians I would like to kindly ask you to sit down and shut up if the only way you know to protest is by harassment and bullying.

Boycotting a business or event is an acceptable way to make your feelings known. Targeting individuals in the same hateful manner in which you claim to have been targeted is not.

Via NRO: Marjorie Christofferson's Courage

Marjorie is just one of 89 people who work for El Coyote. No matter. El Coyote welcomes gay employees and customers, and did so long before that was cool. No matter. El Coyote has just sent $10,000 to gay organizations to atone for Marjorie’s sins. No matter. Marjorie has many gay friends whom she has helped over the years. "When one of the guys died from AIDS, Marjorie paid for his mother to fly out for his funeral," noted one restaurant patron. That doesn’t matter either. [...]

You can see for yourself what kind of person Marjorie Christofferson is at a meeting with GLBT leaders on YouTube here. [...]

In the end, shaking and tearful, she expressed regret for the pain she had caused, but Marjorie also said, " I cannot change a lifetime of faith in which I believe in very deeply. I cannot and will not, no matter what, change my love and respect for you and your views."

Not good enough. [...]

I'm sure many ordinary gay-marriage supporters deplore what happened to Marjorie. But this is now the face of their movement: agree with us, or we will hurt you.

I am appalled at the way Marjorie has been treated. Again, I find myself compelled to apologize for the childish, brutish, and irresponsible actions of far too many of my fellow gay and lesbian citizens. And the thing that really hacks me off about this, is that 99.9% of the spoiled, self-centered American gays who are treating Prop. 8 like their own personal pogrom have never known one day of true discrimination or hardship in their lives.

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Gay Pride Shame & Political Childishness

Activists Target Mormons for Gay-Marriage Ban's Success in California

In the nearly four weeks since Election Day, gay activists and thousands of their supporters have rallied outside Mormon temples around the country, protesting the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' support for California's Proposition 8, the ballot initiative to make same-sex marriage illegal in the Golden State.

There have been calls to boycott the annual Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah; some activists have called for a boycott of the entire state of Utah. Protesters have defaced some church buildings, and in Arapaho County, Colo., the Sheriff's Office is investigating a possible hate crime — the torching of the Book of Mormon on a church's doorstep.

Can you imagine, I mean even imagine the uproar if a group gathered on the steps of a gay community center and burned a copy of "Heather Has Two Mommies," "Daddy's Roommate," or "The Joy of Gay Sex"? Here's a tip for you ladies, throwing a collective temper tantrum isn't going to win you any friends.

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It's Not Just Canada

Do you think crap like this only happens in Canada? Well think again:

A Christian law firm will appeal a ruling by the New Mexico Human Rights Commission fining a photographer who refused to take photos of a homosexual commitment ceremony.

Elaine Huguenin and her husband Jon, who co-own Elane Photography in Albuquerque, New Mexico, are both Christians. So when a lesbian couple asked them to photograph their "commitment ceremony" in Taos, the Huguenins politely refused. In response, Vanessa Willock filed a complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Commission claiming the Huguenins discriminated against her because of her "sexual orientation." On Wednesday, the Commission found the Christian couple guilty of discrimination under state anti-discrimination laws and ordered them to pay more than $6,000 in costs.

The disease of government sanctioned political correctness and multicultural claptrap is spreading and it's a danger to us all.

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Everything Old Is New Again

The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe. ~ Tom Wolfe (Referencing French Socialist Jean-François Revel)

Far Right Wins In Austria... Not the conservatives; the fascists:

The far Right has made a grand return in Austria, emerging from yesterday’s elections as the second biggest parliamentary block, according to preliminary results.

The two parties that campaigned on an anti-immigrant and anti-European Union ticket have captured about 29 per cent of the vote, pushing the country’s traditional conservative party into third place.

Heinz-Christian Strache and his Freedom Party, who were accused of xenophobia and waging an antiMuslim campaign, won 18 per cent — a rise of 7 per cent compared with the last elections. Mr Strache’s former mentor, Jörg Haider, won 11 per cent of the vote with his new party, the Alliance for the Future of Austria.

The mainstream parties recorded their lowest share of the vote since the Second World War, with the Social Democrats dropping 7 per cent to 29.7 per cent, while the conservative People’s Party won 25.6 per cent of the vote — a decline of 9 per cent compared with 2006. [...]

Analysts believe that the surge of the far Right reflects the voters’ dissatisfaction with the failure of the two mainstream parties to provide a functioning government. Their success also owes much to rising anxieties over immigration and the influence of the European Union.

Why? Melanie Phillips speculates:

The rise of these noxious groups is entirely due to the abandonment by social democratic parties of the defence of the nation and the right of individual peoples to their own cultures and self-government. The continuing rise of the BNP in Britain is overwhelmingly the outcome both of the fanatical Europhilia which masquerades as the centre ground while engaged on its project to destroy Britain as an independent nation, and the systematic destruction of British national identity and the demonisation of those Britons who object by the dominant left-wing elites.

The awful thing is that, as the far-right advances and social disorder increases – as it will -- muddled liberals and malign leftists will blame these political and social calamities on ‘the far right’. As a result, the steady encroachment of Islamism will proceed apace -- and anyone who objects will also be demonised as ‘the far right’. The rise of the neo-Nazis will thus turn the defence of democracy toxic. There is therefore a danger that the only people who will be fighting the Islamic fascists and in defence of the nation against the supranational supremacists will be the fascists.

Europe is walking the narrow peak of two slippery slopes - on one side is Islamization, on the other is their old familiar weakness for Darth Vader helmets and goosestepping over broken glass.

via Gateway Pundit

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Losing... Losing... How Long Until It's Lost?

A follow-up to this post:

We Are Losing Europe To Islam

Is advocating freedom of speech "extreme" or "fascist"? Is opposing Islam's law, which knows no race, "racist"? Is supporting Israel (which these parties do far more than other European parties) "Nazi"? The outrageously empty epithets of the Islamo-socialist left seem calculated to stop thought cold and trigger a massive rejection reflex. In this way, resistance becomes anathema, and Islamic law, unchecked, spreads across Europe.

Does that sound "Islamophobic"? You bet. How can anyone who values freedom of conscience, equality before the law and other such Western jewels not have a healthy fear of Islamic law, which values none of these things? Incredibly, this is an emotion that is supposed to be suppressed -- and, in Europe, on pain of prosecution. Indeed, because Filip Dewinter admitted to such "Islamophobia" in an interview, his party, the Vlaams Belang, has been taken to court in Belgium on charges of racism, and, if convicted, will be effectively shut down through defunding by the government.

That hasn't stopped Dewinter, who, in accepting an award at a memorial event dedicated to Oriana Fallaci in Florence, last week, said: "Islamophobia is not merely a phenomenon of unparalleled fear, but it is the duty of every one who wants to safeguard Europe's future. Europe means Rome, Greece, Enlightenment and Judeo-Christian roots. Europe is a continent of castles and cathedrals, not of mosques and minarets."

Bit by bit - with chinks in the armor to allow for things that are very un-Western and very un-fair, such as accommodating Sharia law in Britain, under which British women are second class citizens:

There are concerns for women suffering under the Islamic laws, which favours men.

Mr Siddiqi said that in a recent inheritance dispute handled by the court in Nuneaton, the estate of a Midlands man was divided between three daughters and two sons.

The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts.

In the six cases of domestic violence, Mr Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.

In each case, the women subsequently withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the police and the police stopped their investigations.

What's wrong with a little Sharia law you say? For one thing, it doesn't know when to quit:

Muslim activists point out that allegedly similar Jewish family courts (Bet Din) and Catholic marriage tribunals have existed in Britain for many years, but there is a major difference: such courts explicitly claim jurisdiction only over their believers, whereas according to orthodox Islamic teaching shari’a is the only legitimate law in the world, with universal jurisdiction over Muslims and non-Muslims alike. To a devout Muslim the incorporation of shari’a into British law is by no means the end of the affair. It is merely a major milestone on the road that cannot stop short of subjecting all Britons, regardless of faith, to the strictures of Allah’s commandment and Muhammad’s example.

Forcing non-Muslim employees to remove images of pigs (you know, Wilbur, Porky, Piglet, Kirstie) from their desks:

NOVELTY pig calendars and toys have been banned from a council office in case they offend Muslim staff.

Workers in the benefits department at Dudley Council, West Midlands, were told to remove or cover up all pig-related items, including toys, porcelain figures, calendars and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.

Bosses acted after a Muslim complained about pig-shaped stress relievers delivered to the council in the run-up to the Islamic festival of Ramadan.

Muslims are barred from eating pork in the Koran and consider pigs unclean.

Councillor Mahbubur Rahman, a practising Muslim, backed the ban. He said: It's a tolerance of people's beliefs.

Demanding that non-Muslims observe Islamic holidays

Councillors have been ordered not to eat during town hall meetings while Muslim colleagues fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

All elected members at Left-wing Tower Hamlets Council in East London have been sent an email asking them to follow strict Islamic fasting during September no matter what their faith.

Simple respect for another faith? Uh, no. It's forced adherence to Muslim beliefs.

Read Dr. Sanity's post, The Religion Of Malignantly Narcissistic Entitlement And The Idiots Who Love Them For It:

All too often, the behavior and attitude we witness today from the practitioners of Islam--in Britain, France and most of Europe; as well as in the Middle East--has gone way beyond "rude" or "impolite", however; and more clearly belongs in the realm of "borderline" and "narcissistic" psychopathology. And the behavior of subservient leftists to Islam has gone way beyond "pandering", "appeasing", or "enabling", and belongs in the realm of active submission.

The inaptly named "Religion of Peace" (RoP) has all the hallmarks of a "Religion of Malignant Narcissism" (RoMN). Some of the more radical practitioners of this religion seem to think that it is their divine right (also called having a "sense of entitlement") to demand the world accede to their wishes at all times [...]

I am not talking here only about the "extremists", since many of these attitudes are apparently shared by even the so-called "moderates" of the religion; who, while they might eschew the more violent acting out, still arrogantly express the sense of entitlement and display not the slightest insight into their own intolerance and phobias regarding other cultures.

Europe is sliding down a slope from which it may not return. It's frightening. Truly.

ht: Atlas Shrugs

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Muslims: It's Not All About You

Nebraska Plant Ends Special Treatment For Muslim Workers

Managers at a Nebraska meatpacking plant have told Muslim employees, most of them Somali, that shift changes made to meet their prayer demands weren't working and would be ended.

Union president Dan Hoppes said Thursday that the workers reacted well to the news, but he didn't know whether they would walk out later in protest as they did Monday. [...]

Counter protests by non-Muslim workers began Wednesday. They said the shift changes penalized them while favoring the Muslim workers.

The company made an honest effort to accommodate you but this is America, your right to religious freedom ends where it interferes with your fellow workers. If your religion is so inflexible that it cannot adapt to your work schedule then you need to find another job.

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Another Thought On Minister Oprah

I wanted to add to my thoughts from this post on Oprah's views of faith and spirituality, by saying I believe the error that Oprah - and others - makes when talking about other faiths or rather their preferred word "paths" is to mistake any kernel of truth as the whole corn cob.

I rather agree with C.S. Lewis who said:

What had been holding me back [from a conversion to Christianity] has not been so much a difficulty in believing as a difficulty in knowing what the doctrine meant: you can't believe a thing while you are ignorant what the thing is. My puzzle was the whole doctrine of Redemption: in what sense has the life and death of Christ 'saved' or 'opened salvation to' the world...

Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me ... was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn't mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in the Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even though I could not say in cold prose "what it meant". Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God's myth where the other are men's myths: i.e., the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call "real things". Therefore, it is true, not in the sense of being a description of God (that no finite mind would take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to appear to our faculties. The "doctrines" we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.

And in The Pilgrim's Regress:

“Child, if you will, it is mythology. It is but truth, not fact: an image, not the very real. But then it is My mythology. The words of Wisdom are also myth and metaphor: but since they do not know themselves for what they are, in them the hidden myth is master, where it should be servant: and it is but of man’s inventing. But this is My invention, this is the veil under which I have chosen to appear even from the first until now. For this end I made your senses and for this end your imagination, that you might see My face and live. What would you have? Have you not heard among the Pagans the story of Semele? Or was there any age in any land when men did not know that corn and wine were the blood and body of a dying and yet living God?”

We can find the truth in all of human history and in all of mankind's stories - God has been speaking to us that long - but we don't find the whole truth until God himself came to us in the person of Christ. Of course such philosophizing is much more complicated than can be said in short quotes, but that I think is what Oprah is missing.

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Spiritual Oprah: Buying Into The Lie

What about Jesus?

Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. Acts 4:12

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God Help England

English Christians apologize for praying for Muslims:

A row has broken out after a Christian group organised a day of prayer in Oxford about Muslims during Ramadan.

The Muslim Education Centre of Oxford (Meco) accused Witney-based Open Doors UK of preaching “evangelical propaganda”, after the Christian group held a Call to Prayer day in Oxford yesterday.

But Open Doors UK, which held the event at St Aldate’s Church, insisted it had been taken out of context, although it “regretted” any offence that had been caused.

Good grief! They apologized faster than Takeru Kobayashi stuffs his mouth at a hot dog eating contest! Convert already you stupid dhimmis. I don't know about you but the Muslim world can kiss my entire ass; I will never apologize for praying.

via Gates of Vienna

And then there's this little bit of creeping sharia...

Compulsory Fasting For All During Ramadan

Later this month it's Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It's one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar, so I'd be obliged, please, if you'd all stay at home, turn off the TV and refrain from your usual activities. Ten days after that it's Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when Jews fast and spend the day in synagogue. So I've also asked my Times colleagues not to work then. And I will be mightily offended if I learn afterwards that any of them have been eating.

You might not think I am being serious. But if I was Head of Democratic Services at Tower Hamlets Council in East London, I would be. Last week John Williams e-mailed each of the borough's 51 councillors with a similar instruction.

For the duration of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, they are, he told them - every one of them, Muslim, Catholic, Jew or atheist - to behave during council meetings as strict Muslims. They are not to eat or drink; they are to break for Muslim prayers; they are to do as they are ordered by the Muslim religion.

Oh yes, it is happening. Just imagine the outrage though, if someone tried to make the Muslim councilors fast during Yom Kippur or Lent? Hoo-boy! There'd be rioting and car burning in the streets! Burquas torn in anguish! Islamic Outrage Boy in an apoplectic fit! In short - the typical Muslim reaction to anything they don't like.

via Road Sassy

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The Religion Of Peace Kills Again

Saudi Man Kills Daughter For Converting To Christianity

A Saudi man working with the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice recently killed his daughter for converting to Christianity.

According to sources close to the victim, the religious police member had cut the tongue of the girl and burned her to death following a heated debate on religion.

I am the resurrection and the Life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. John 11:25

Tributes at Tasty Infidelicacies and Jihad Watch

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Don't Let The Enhanced Fireworks Fool You...

Remember who's hosting the Olympics: Chinese Officials Seize Bibles from American Christians

Chinese customs officials confiscated more than 300 Bibles on Sunday from four American Christians who arrived in a southwestern city with plans to distribute them, the group's leader said.

The Bibles were taken from the group's checked luggage after they landed at the airport in the city of Kunming, said Pat Klein, head of Vision Beyond Borders. The group, based in Sheridan, Wyoming, distributes Bibles and Christian teaching materials around the world to "strengthen the persecuted church," according to its Web site.

The group arrived in China on Sunday and had intended to distribute the Bibles to people in the city, Klein told the AP in a telephone interview while still at the airport.

"I heard that there's freedom of religion in China, so why is there a problem for us to bring Bibles?" Klein said. "We had over 300 copies and customs took all of them from us." [...]

China faces routine criticism for its human rights violations and its repression of religious freedom. Religious practice is heavily regulated by the Communist Party, with worship allowed only in party-controlled churches, temples and mosques, while those gathering outside face harassment, arrest and terms in labor camps or prison.

A Chinese Christian activist was detained Aug. 10, the opening weekend of the Olympics, on his way to a church service attended by U.S. President George W. Bush in Beijing. A rights group said later that the activist, Hua Huiqi, a leader of the unofficial Protestant church in Beijing, had escaped from police and was in hiding.

China's a totalitarian state... nothing more, nothing less.

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Thrown Under The Straight Talk Express

McCain Denounces Hagee

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) renounced controversial Christian pastor John Hagee today, after learning that Hagee had remarked Nazism constituted an expression of God's will.

The comments, which Hagee made in the late 1990s and were first posted on the website "Talk to Action" on May 15, draw from a biblical verse and imply that Adolf Hitler's actions had helped speed the creation of the state of Israel.

"'And they the hunters should hunt them,' that will be the Jews," Hagee said. "'From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.' If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the holocaust, you can't see that."

Um... that scripture does sound like a description of the Holocaust, does it not? I believe Hagee's point was that Hitler fulfilled a prophecy, not that God wanted the Jews dead. I'm not saying I agree with Hagee's interpretations of scripture, but I don't think the man is an anti-Semite. Oh well, political correctness rules in McCain's non-offensive campaign. Welcome to the underside of the bus, Pastor Hagee. The conservative base has been expecting you.

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The "Jesus" Thing...

In case you haven't heard... Christians (or "Followers of the Way" or some other non-confrontational, meaningless generic label) should "move beyond" the whole "Jesus thing."

Via Mark Steyn, HT: Right View From The Left Coast

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Reverend Wright: Round Deux

Obama Says He's Outraged By Former Pastor's Comments

Democrat Barack Obama said Tuesday he was outraged by the latest assertion by his former pastor that criticism of his fiery sermons is an attack on the black church. [...]

"I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia explaining that he's done enormous good. ... But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS. ... There are no excuses. They offended me. They rightly offend all Americans and they should be denounced."

Is it just me or does the Rev. Wright suddenly sound meaner and more strident this time around? Don't be fooled by this political theater. It's a ploy to allow Obama a "do over" in dealing with the controversy. I mean come on, after spending 20 years in Trinity's pews and his half-hearted response to the initial brouhaha, no one believes Obama doesn't agree with what that church teaches. So they're just replaying the whole issue again so Obama and all of his supporters can act righteously outraged and look like they've rebuked the good reverend.

UPDATE: Obama Campaign announces: A 'big press conference' on Wright (aka the climax in our little vignette's plot...) Watch out grandma, you're about to have some company under the bus.

Amy Holmes at NRO was more prescient than I

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He Didn't Even Watch It!

Via Michelle Malkin: "Did you know that John McCain lambasted the North Carolina GOP’s anti-Obama/Jeremiah Wright ad without having seen it?"

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Who Has The Problem Here?

Atheist's Lawsuit Cites His Treatment in the Army

Hall, 23, was raised in a Protestant family in North Carolina and dropped out of school before earning his GED. It wasn't until after he joined the Army that he began questioning religion, eventually deciding he couldn't follow any faith.

But he feared how that would look to other soldiers.

"I was ashamed to say that I was an atheist," Hall said. [not much conviction there, huh? ed.]

It eventually came out in Iraq in 2007, when he was in a firefight. Hall was a gunner on a Humvee, which took several bullets in its protective shield. Afterward, his commander asked whether he believed in God, Hall said.

"I said, 'No, but I believe in Plexiglas,"' Hall said. "I've never believed I was going to a happy place. You get one life. When I die, I'm worm food."

The issue came to a head when, according to Hall, a superior officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, threatened to bring charges against him for trying to hold a meeting of atheists in Iraq. Welborn has denied Hall's allegations.

I seriously doubt that today's military is dumb enough to make a stupid threat like that, but maybe I'm wrong. Further, Mr. Hall said "he believes his promotion to sergeant has been blocked because of his lawsuit..." Duhhhh, you think?

It sounds to me like Mr. Hall is the one who has a problem with his atheism. He's catching flack for filing a lawsuit over a non-issue, not because he lacks faith. Although I argue that believing in nothing takes at least as much faith as believing in something greater than yourself.

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Tensions Over Olympics In Bejing Still Ratcheting Up

Athletes Who Take Tibet Stand "Face Olympic Cut"

Athletes who display Tibetan flags at Olympic venues — including in their own rooms — could be expelled from this summer’s Games in Beijing under anti-propaganda rules.

Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said that competitors were free to express their political views but faced sanctions if they indulged in propaganda.

He accompanied those comments with an admission that the Games were in “crisis” after pro-Tibet protests engulfed the Olympic torch relay.

Mr Rogge’s call for Beijing to abide by its promise to address human rights was given short shrift by Beijing, which bluntly told him to keep politics out of the Games.

The Red Chinese and the IOC using similar tactics. It looks like authoritarian birds of a feather will flock together. I've lived in an Olympic city and let me tell you, the IOC is nothing but a bunch of bastards. This Olympiad is going to be a complete cluster-fuck. I couldn't have asked for a better birthday present this year.

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A Petition In Defense Of Geert Wilders

To: The Dutch Government

WHEREAS Geert Wilders has exercised his fundamental human right of freedom of expression and spoken out, with facts and evidence, of the threat posed by radical Islam;

WHEREAS certain elements within Islamic communities have threatened a boycott of Dutch goods if Geert Wilders is not punished by the Dutch government for exercising his freedom of expression; and

WHEREAS certain elements in Dutch industry and the Dutch government are suggesting that Geert Wilders be prosecuted civilly or criminally, in order to prevent such a boycott;

IT IS RESOLVED that, in the event that the Dutch government attempts, in any way, to punish or prosecute Geert Wilders, civilly or criminally, for exercising his freedom of expression, the undersigned will initiate a boycott of any and all Dutch goods.

Sincerely,

___________________

Sign the petition here...

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Rev. Wright Retires In Style!

Obama’s Former Pastor Getting $1.6M Home in Retirement

A two-week FOX News investigation, however, has uncovered where Wright will be spending a good deal of his time in retirement, and it is a far cry from the impoverished Chicago streets where the preacher led his ministry for 36 years.

FOX News has uncovered documents that indicate Wright is about to move to a 10,340-square-foot, four-bedroom home in suburban Chicago, currently under construction in a gated community.

It doesn't look like whitey is keeping Jeremiah down, does it? A gated community? Why on earth does he feel the need to be behind gates, hmmm? I'll you why, because he doesn't want to hobnob with the people he panders to with his "social gospel" and black liberation rhetoric.

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