Fear of Sarah
SPECIAL NOTE: Normally I write my entries using Firefox. The whole blog is done on Firefox. I notice that when I use Internet Explorer to read it, almost none of my sidebar shows up. Due to the fact that I crashed my computer this past Sunday, I'm creating this post on Internet Explorer. I don't know if that will make a difference when one views this post on Firefox. Thanks to a ton of help from my computer guy neighbor, I should be back to normal (well my computer should be) by tomorrow or Monday . . . or Tuesday. Then I'll look at it on Firefox.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled blog post.
The thing I like best about Sarah Palin is that her entry in the race has caused me to laugh more than I've laughed during any presidential race that I can remember. And it's not just the insane ravings of the Obamatons, who are foaming at the mouth because their savior has been upstaged. Hope and change now seem to be no more than a empty slogans. They've been exchanged for slander, insult, and character assassination, you know, those tactics that we're told are Republican trademarks.
But it's not just the unintenial humor being provided by suddenly panicked leftists. Others are conciously creating clever entertainment by jumping onto the Sarah Palin humor bandwagon. The always dependably sarcastic satirists at
The People's Cube have a bunch of posts.
Iowahawk, brilliant as ever, channels an early role model of mine, Bugs Bunny for his parody,
An Open Letter to Sarah Palin
By Wile E. Reporter
National Political Correspondent, MSNBCNNABS
(Medius Vulgaris)
*Knock Knock Knock*
Good afternoon, madam. Allow me to introduce myself: my name is Wile E. Reporter, investigative correspondent for an international network news gathering organization. No doubt you may have seen my award-winning coverage, assuming your igloo is equipped with a satellite dish. No, I am not selling anything nor am I working my way through college, so let's get down to cases. You are a Republican candidate, and I am going to eat you alive. Now don't try to get away! I am more educated, more cunning, faster, and larger than you are... and I'm a genius. In fact, I have not one, but two diplomas from the Acme Correspondence School of Journalism. And you? Why, you could hardly pass the entrance examinations to kindergarten, let alone the vice presidency of a major western democracy. Rather than suffer the inevitable torture of the vetting I am about to give you, I think you will agree that it's best for both of us that we save time and get this over with quickly. I will give you the customary two minutes to say your prayers, and take the "Eagleton option."
*SLAM*
Sigh. Why do they always want to do it the hard way?
And then there's Get Fuzzy. In a bit of inspired madness, Darby Conley has injected a bit of Monty Python into his Sarah Palin commentary. With all of the lame political strips that my comics page suffers from, it is truly refreshing to get real laughs when Get Fuzzy gets political.
SINCE THE STRIP IS SMALL AND HARD TO READ:
ROB: Why do you keep trying to trash Obama? Are you nervous about your boy McCain's Vice-Presidential pick?
BUCKY: He picked someone? Who? Roof Dog Romney? Tom "Cranial Ridge?
ROB: Palin, the gov-
BUCKY: We got Palin?! Victory!!! You got no answer to that! Even Cleese - No - not even Gervais can save your sorry -
ROB: Not Michael Palin, you idiot, Sarah Palin.
BUCKY: Come again?
SATCHEL: Ha! Ha! And now for something completely unexpected!
ROB: Admit it. You're worried about your guy's V.P. choice.
BUCKY: I stand by Palin.
SATCHEL: III'm a Republican and I'm OK. I work all night and I sleep all day!
ROB: Just say it! You'd rather have someone else! Like Whitman! Or Lieberman!
SATCHEL: I'm afraid we're all out of Lieberman, sir.
ROB: Satchel, stop shouting Michael Palin lines! We're talking politics.
SATCHEL: NO-BODY expects the Alaskan politician!
Of course, you do have to be a Monty Python fan to appreciate these strips.
I only hope that Palin and McCain beat Obama and Biden. Then the hilarity will continue for at least the next four years as the deranged MSM and disgusted progressives rend their garments and wear sackcloth and ashes as they flail away in frustration and impotently threaten once again to move to Canada.
Oh yeah, and let's face it. McCain and Palin would make a much better president and VP. Obama would be a disaster for the country and for the free world.
Labels: comic strips, Get Fuzzy, Iowahawk, Monty Python, Obama, Sarah Palin, The People's Cube
How to Lose Friends and Influence (?) People
Yesterday, my son, who is in college far away from home left a comment here as to how liberal his classmates and his history professor are. My advice to him was, "Be strong, be sarcastic, make them think." Today I had to take my own advice. I knew I would have to eventually.
I've written before (somewhere, but I don't feel like looking for the link) about my previous more liberal bias. Some of my friends have noticed that change in my political views, especially when it comes to discussions on Israel. Some, who I don't see often get surprised when they start talking politics. Other formerly normal, mainstream citizens who have crossed over to the dark side and have become right-wing extremist bloggers, most notably
Neo-neocon have written at great length about "coming out" to their friends. Others like
Bookworm Room, if I remember correctly, have been keeping it a secret. I've gotten to the point where I can't just listen and smile when my liberal friends start ranting. I'm polite when they keep things to a normal conversation. For example, I didn't start an argument at the dinner party we were invited to last month and the conversation turned to "John McCain is a dope".
This morning though, I was at a social function at my temple, talking to a guy I've known for a few years. My daughter used to be friends with one of his daughters. We always stop and chat when we see each other. He's a nice guy, and he is very bright. He's a doctor. He told me he might have to move to Canada. I reminded him of the promise made by so many progressive intellectuals after the 2000 and 2004 elections. Then he started about Bush, and the war, and the economy, and the Supreme Court (who we just KNOW validated Bush's stolen election) and his fear that there's going to be a redneck vice president in 2009. Yes, there is worry in Obamaland. In fact, judging by the level of invective being hurled at Sarah Palin, I'd say that there is gut-wrenching fear among the Obamatons.
So I presented the other side. I ran some of Obama's faults by him. I only managed to get through some of his foreign policy gaffes and his economic illiteracy when his daughter began dragging him from the room because she wanted to go home. There was so much more I was going to bring up and as I was thinking about it later, even more episodes that I had forgotten. There are so many Obama gaffes, how can anyone remember all of them?
Are we still friends? I'll know the next time I see him. As Dumbledore famously states in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, "There are all kinds of courage. It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends." I think in the movie version, the line was changed to, ". . . it takes
more to stand up to our friends." This was not the first friend I've argued about the election with, and with November 4 only a few months away, I'm sure I will displease and appall more of my friends. But I do have to be honest even if it means shocking people with the change in my political leanings.
Labels: '08 election, Obama, Sarah Palin
ISNA crescent atop Flight 93 minaret
The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) is a Saudi funded Wahabbist group. Its logo is in the shape of a mosque with a crescent topped minaret and a crescent topped dome. Here is the ISNA logo juxtaposed to a similarly shaped mosque from Uppsala Sweden:
Uppsala 40%">
Both configurations have upturned crescents. The difference is that the arms of the ISNA crescents are lifted symmetrically, while the Uppsala crescents have one arm above the other.
On actual minarets, the Uppsala configuration is the norm, seen also in this photo of the Abdul Gaffoor mosque in Singapore:
There seems to be only one example of an actual minaret that is to be built in the ISNA configuration. That is the Tower of Voices minaret from the planned Flight 93 memorial:
Two views of the Tower of Voices minaret, showing an Islamic-shaped crescent at the top, with its arms reaching symmetrically up into the sky. (Source images here and here, originally from the Memorial Project's design competition website.)
The up-tower view shows the symbolic Islamic heavens projected against the sky while the symbolic lives of the 40 heroes literally dangle down below. Murdoch had to do this in order for his Crescent of Embrace design (centered around a giant Mecca-oriented crescent) to be a proper mosque. The 40 infidels could not actually be honored in the design. They had to be depicted as symbolically damned.
Murdoch actually repeats this theme in the central crescent, where the 4 extra translucent blocks (one for each hijacker) are all placed in the symbolic Islamic heavens (the crescent and star parts of the structure), while the 40 translucent blocks inscribed with the names of the 40 heroes are all placed outside of the symbolic Islamic heavens.
Do Wahabbists recognize the crescent as a symbol of Islam?
One of the two Muslim scholars who the Park Service tapped for expert opinion on whether claims of Islamic symbolism in the Flight 93 memorial should be taken seriously was a Paul Murdoch classmate named Nasser Rabbat. (Both recieved Masters degrees in architecture from UCLA in 1984.)
One of the excuses Rabbat offered the Park Service for not being concerned about all the Islamic-shaped crescents was to question whether the crescent really should be seen as a Muslim symbol at all:The Crescent is a debatable Islamic universal symbol. Many groups do not use it. I know in fact of no militant group that uses it. [AHEM.] Islamic modern states have opted to use it, sometimes with the star, which is a modern symbol with no Islamic connotation.
He is right here that the most fanatical Islamic fundamentalists, the Salafists (who model themselves on the first three generations of violent Islamic conquest), are not keen on the crescent, since it was adopted as a Muslim symbol by the Ottomans, long after the time of Muhammad.
The official Saudi state religion of Wahabbism is Salafist. That is why the Saudi Arabian flag is one of the only Islamic flags not to feature the Ottoman crescent and star:
Saudi flag, left, features the Muslim profession of faith, and a sword. Turkish flag, right, features the Ottoman crescent and star.
But the ISNA is a primary vehicle for the Saudi funded building of Wahabbist mosques in North America. How can this be? Is the crescent actually a universal enough Islamic symbol that even the Salafist Saudi Wahabbists acknowledge it?
Indeed, and for a very simple reason. The crescent is not just the shape of the Ottoman flag. It is also a reference to the Islamic lunar calendar, and it is the shape of the archetypical Islamic mihrab: the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built. Here are the two most famous mihrabs in the world, the mihrab at the Prophet's mosque in Medina, and the mihrab of the Great Mosque in Cordoba, seen here in sequence with Barack Hussein Obama's campaign logo:
Face into the crescent to face Mecca. For the contrast between Murdoch's intentional use of Islamic symbol shapes and Obama's unintentional use of Islamic symbol shapes, see our earlier blogburst on Obama's crescent-topped logo.
So yes, the crescent actually is a universal Islamic symbol. The only people who even question it are the most extreme Salafists, which evidently includes Nasser Rabbat. How did this Paul Murdoch classmate ever get tapped by the Park Service in the first place, so that he could even be in a position to give them his blatantly dishonest excuses for not being concerned about the giant Mecca oriented crescent? Just one of the many things that Congress needs to investigate. (Petition here.)
ISNA big in Murdoch's hometown of LA
Murdoch could be some kind of nihilistic leftist, but the most likely explanation for his attempt to stab a terrorist memorial mosque into the heartland of America is that he at some point converted to an aggressively hateful, violent and supremacist sect of Islam like Saudi Wahabbism and is acting today as a freelance jihadist.
Such a person would almost certainly be familiar with the ISNA. 80% of American mosques preach the Saudi poison, but often the Saudi funding is hidden. Not so in Los Angeles, where the city's largest mosque, the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, is openly funded by the Saudi Government.
We won't learn Murdoch's actual associations without a Congressional investigation, but the fact that he used a minaret configuration that is elsewhere seen only in the ISNA logo is mildly suggestive of a Wahabbist connection. For now, the only reason to bring up the Murdoch/ISNA likeness is to clarify that even Salafists accept the crescent as a component of mosque design.
ISNA President Ingrid Matteson spoke at the interfaith convocation of the 2008 Democratic Presidential Convention
They picked a Wahabbist as their representative of Islam? Why not invite bin Laden himself, who is a perfectly orthodox Wahabbist?
The ISNA was founded by the Saudi funded Muslim Students Association (MAS), which has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the progenitor of all modern Sunni terrorist groups, including al Qaeda.
What else should we expect? After all, the mainstream left DID spend the last five years trying desperately to hand Iraq over to al Qaeda and Iran.
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Labels: Flight 93 Memorial Project
The Return
We had a very nice Labor Day weekend, camping in one of our lovely Michigan state parks. The weather couldn't have been any better. I got to read the first 278 pages of David McCullough's Truman. We cooked all of our meals over a campfire, and everything tastes better cooked over a wood fire, even pancakes and coffee. I lost the Euchre tournament after being in first place in the second from the last round. The number of children attending our annual outing decreases every year as more of our children reach college age, but there were a couple of new families this year with younger children.
During the weekend, most of us were cut off from the outside world. Sure, some campers from outside our group had fancy expensive RV's with satellite TV, but from what I noticed, they were mostly watching football. On Saturday (or was it Sunday, I really don't remember) I was discussing the upcoming presidential elections with one of the group. He mentioned McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for VP. With my very limited knowledge of Palin, it sounded like a strange choice.
Finally plugging back into the information superhighway yesterday was as big a shock as I'd ever had on the Internet. It had turned into the All Palin - All the Time news channel. Conservatives were thrilled, liberals were outraged and digging for dirt, both real and imagined. The whole episode with Palin's impending grandmotherhood has especially sent them over the edge.
Next year, when we return from camping, I hope to be able to ease back into the madness.
Labels: camping, Sarah Palin
War's legitimate object is more perfect peace. Flavius Vegitius Renatus
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SINCE THE STRIP IS SMALL AND HARD TO READ:
CHALLAH AKBAR
