A Western fatwah

It’s been said that “only” about 10% of the Muslim world are the radical fanatics we read and hear so much about. That makes that tally “only” about 150 million Muslim radicals or about half the population of the USA. Can we further assume that 90% of the Muslim world would disapprove if their 10% were successful in bringing America and the western world to its knees? I hardly think so. It would simply mean that the fatwah in the Koran regarding infidels had been honored and Muslims everywhere would be jubilant.

Almost 100% of Muslims devote a good part of every day to their religion as is required by the teachings and interpretations of the Koran. The radicals among them that kill, maim, torture and perform other unspeakable acts on infidels (and even their own) do so because of religious fervor, martyrdom and the fruits of those labors.

Al Qaeda attacked the US in September of 2001, inflicting more casualties than what Japan did at Pearl Harbor. Since then Al Qaeda and mullahs of the world have issued many more fatwahs promising and executing attacks and atrocities. The slightest “provocation” against their religion is met with violence and more killings. The alleged flushing of the Koran in Guantanamo caused death and destruction. Using pages of the Bible as toilet paper in a Palestinian occupied Christian church in Bethlehem a few years ago was perfectly acceptable.     

To help end WWII in the Pacific, the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August of 1945 with atomic bombs. The following month Japan surrendered unconditionally, the war was over. It took the destruction of two cities and the devastation of their populations to make the enemy understand our resolve.

Everything that Al Qaeda and radical Islam does is in the name of Allah, thus in the name, or the blame, of their religion. The #1 and #2 holiest sites in Islam are in the cities of Mecca and Medina, located in western Saudi Arabia. Both cities have a population of about 1.3 million people each.

I propose that a fatwah be issued by the US and/or the western world to Al Qaeda and fanatical Muslims everywhere that another attack such as 9/11, or worse, on the western world or Israel will be punished by the utter destruction of either one of those cities. If not heeded, destroy the other one. It worked in Japan and ended WWII except this time, during WWIII, we give them fair and advanced warning.

I further believe that by doing so the 90% of non-radical Muslims will put all the pressure necessary on the 10% radicals/Al Qaeda to disband and implode.

Radical plan? Sure, they taught us well. 

Back to the future?

Recent Headlines:  1: Hundreds of thousands Iraqi Shiites took to the streets in anti US demonstrations.   2: The US government has reacted angrily at Iran’s president’s announcement that his country has begun enriching uranium on an industrial scale.   After 3200 American lives are lost, countless more wounded and hundreds of billions of US dollars spent to bring some semblance of order to Iraq they have the audacity to demonstrate against the US.  Iran’s Ahmadinejad has repeatedly shown his contempt for the West and will continue to do so with impunity. Both countries plus Syria want us out of the region. Fine, let’s do that, but let’s also leave with what we brought, i.e. the modern world.   A few nuclear devices detonated in their stratosphere would render anything electronic useless with negligible loss of life. One or two squads of Navy Seals would destroy Iran’s only refinery for producing gasoline. With little effort our carrier based Wild Weasels could jam every radio and television transmission in the region. Another easy matter would be to cut off worldwide internet access to the area. Finally, a few cruise missiles would destroy the chemical plants capable of making exportable explosive devices.Voila, back to the fourteenth century, the Middle Ages so desired by their Mullahs.All done with minimum bloodshed and in the twinkle of an eye.   There is very little of the modern world invented or produced by these cultures that so despise us. We can limp along without their markets for a very long time.   When, in 1962, the French were finally persuaded to withdraw from Algeria they took with them most of their technology. It wasn’t long before even their most ardent enemies there begged them to return. So, if these mid-East medievalists really want us out, let’s close the door and turn off the lights.

Billary Clintons

Already, at this early stage, Hillary Clinton seems to be the overall front runner for the Democrat's nomination for president.

The Clinton administration gave the country the only president ever impeached on grounds of personal malfeasance; the highest number of convictions and guilty pleas by friends and associates; the highest number of cabinet officials to come under criminal investigation; the highest number of witnesses to flee the country; the highest number of witnesses to die suddenly; the first president to be sued for sexual harassment; the first president accused of rape; the first First Lady to come under criminal investigation; the largest criminal plea agreement in an illegal campaign contribution case; the first president to establish a legal defense fund; the first president to be held in contempt of court; the greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions; the greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions from abroad.

The crimes and cover-ups of the Clintons are almost too numerous to chronicle in any one place – Cattlegate, Whitewater, Travelgate, abuse of the Internal Revenue Service, Troopergate, the way they ignored the growing threat of Islamo-fascist terrorism to focus law enforcement on the bogus threat of the religious right, Pardongate, the way they sold national security secrets for campaign cash.

And they, the democrats, want to send this happy couple back to the White House?

Duke's non-rape case

The three young white men who were accused of raping a black stripper have yet to face their accuser. The accuser's name and/or image is still a mystery while photos, names and videos of the accused have been widely shown. More recently the D.A, Mike Nifong, has admitted that there was no DNA linking the three boys to that rape although DNA from as many as five other men was found. Mr. Nifong had known about that crucial fact for six months. But there was this little election coming up and he needed the black vote. There is little doubt that Mike Nifong and his office will be sued and that he will be forced to step down as District Attorney. As well he should!

These facts are now widely known, as well as the fact that three men may never fully recuperate from such a terrible accusation.

What is not discussed in this tawdry and salacious story is what will happen to the accuser? Will she merely be charged with filing a false report to the police? What are all the legitimate charges that can be filed against her? What is fitting punishment for her?

Perhaps Al Sharpton will do another Tawana Brawley and come to her rescue! Surely there will be enough cameras around.

Redeployment

There are approximately 120,000 American troops on military installations in Europe, many of them in Germany. These troops are not in imminent battle danger, they live a normal life. Certainly Russia has no intention of invading Europe and the Balkan countries have, for the most part, quieted down.
Other than providing economic incentives for their host countries, why are they there?

The US is about to send 21,000 more troops to Iraq, most of them will be fresh recruits. Why not redeploy the more experienced US soldiers out of Europe and relieve the soldiers in Iraq, some of them are there on their third tour?

The 21,000 troops could be sent to the US/Mexico and even Canada borders. That would make much better use of our military resources.

Again, I'm no military expert, it just makes more sense to use resources where they are needed most..

Avoiding a mid-east nuclear war

The continued sabre rattling in the Mid-East is becoming extremely dangerous. Iran's promise to "wipe Israel off the map" is ominous to say the least. Ahmadinejad's nosethumbing at the UN Security Council and defying their mandates is beyond description. Many leaders of that world and the western world are talking about nuclear weapons. Pakistan, a neighbor of Iran and a Muslim nation, has nukes. Israel, a mortal enemy of Iran has nukes. Who will fire the first nuke and who will fire the last one? It could be a rhetorical question, it doesn't have to be a nuclear question at all, although war there is inevitable.

Sometime in the early 1980's, Ronald Reagan prevailed upon the Saudis to make a concession.
He persuaded the Saudis to cut oil prices to clobber Soviet revenues from its Siberian fields. The Saudis -- by gaining market share at the Soviet Union's expense -- made more money at the lower prices than they had been making at the higher.
Money talks in Saudi Arabia and this precedent is well and fondly remembered. Besides, the Saudis want nothing to do with a nuclear Iran.
Iran's economy is almost in shambles and is wholly dependent on oil and gas. Should the West be able to again persuade the Saudis to cut oil prices drastically,(they can afford it)the Iran economy would collapse and the Saudis would gain.

Iran's south western province of Khuzestan produces over 90% of their oil. Incapacitating those oil fields with a very short, conventional bombing run by the Israelis from Al Basrah in Iraq would have Ahmadinejad and his Mullahs on their knees.
The combination of collapsed oil prices and the inabilty to pump oil will ruin Iran economically.
No oil, no money, no nukes and millions of lives spared.

I'm no military analyst nor am I an economist, but I can read a map and I do have some common sense.

Car dealers are funny

CAR DEALERS ARE FUNNY

I have lived in many cities all over this country and if one thing remains a constant it is car dealers and their quest to draw attention to themselves by any means necessary.

Most car dealers consider themselves #1 in their respective markets:
#1 in volume (as if that makes any difference to the car buyer)
#1 in service (except when you need it)
#1 in sales (yeah, so what does that mean to the client?)
#1 in friendliness (that is if you keep buying cars from them)
#1 in lowest prices (that is if you don’t have a trade-in, which most people do)
#1 in lowest overhead (I guess that means that they’ll take less profit?)
#1 in most cars on the lot (more choices I presume, unless you add the cars next door)

I’m sure I can come up with many more, but where they really get me is in their promotion and advertising:

Tying balloons to car antennas
Leaving the hoods open (to prove there is an engine in there?)
Leaving the hoods open and placing cardboard signs in them spelling S-A-L-E
Huge balloon flying over dealership
Cars under tents, as in tent sales (why?)
Extra staff on hand (which means the salespeople didn’t get a day off)
$200 below invoice! (we’re taking a loss when you buy this car?)

And then there is the advertising:

Direct mail: announcing you are the winner!
Billboards featuring a huge picture of the dealer himself, big smile of course. Narcissism anyone?
Newspaper ads in screaming color
Radio ads with lots of bass and reverb “last chance” (until the next chance)
Then there are the TV ads with all the radio gimmicks plus sight, sound effects and more screaming, warnings and owners, managers or salespeople pretending to be earnest. Now, try reading the legal disclosures.

Finally: We’ll finance anybody. This is for hoping you have a poor credit rating for higher interest rates they will charge, especially with on-lot financing. There’s always the repo man.
Add your experience:

Race baiting the N word

Jesse Jackson, who never met a camera he didn't like, is on a new mission since the unfortunate Kramer incident: eradicate the "N" word. Michael Richards has profusely apologized for having used the N word, to the point it is now starting to sound ridiculous.

Of course it was the same Jesse Jackson who called Jews, Hymies and New York City, Hymie town.

"If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house." so said Al Sharpton, another camera mugger and alleged Civil Rights activist

Gold Digger, a Kanye West song, encourages whites to sing along and use his N word.

Andrew Young, former ambassador to the UN and former Atlanta mayor claims that Jewish, Arab and Korean merchants sell "stale bread, bad meat and wilted vegetables" to black folk.

To have a successful Rap song, (especially Gangsta Rap) the N word must be used frequently, along with "Ho" and "Bitch".

I don't know if Jesse Jackson will win his new crusade but it will keep the cameras on him while his "brother-in-arms", Al Sharpton, stirs up the black community with race baiting in Hymie Town over the police shooting incident.

The use of the N word by any race is not defensible, then so are many words and phrases. It merely shows the total lack of a decent vocabulary.

All the while Booker T. Washington is rolling in his grave.

Thank you South Korea

37,000 American soldiers lost their lives, with many more wounded, trying to keep North Korea from overrunning South Korea. An armistice was declared in 1953 and today more than 30,000 American troops are deployed along the DMZ keeping South Korea in relative comfort with a healthy economy and the US their second most important export partner.

"Bush failed to win South Korea's support for intercepting ships suspected of carrying supplies possibly bound for North Korea's nuclear weapons program."

That's part of the story in today's (11/18)paper. That's the thanks we get from keeping the two Koreas trying to kill each other and fighting a communist takeover.
Anti-Americanism is rampant in South Korea but as long as we are prepared to do their fighting for them and hold North Korea at bay with our nuclear strenghts, they'll tolerate American boots on their soil. Don't forget to buy their export products, cars, electronics and even foods.

WalMart's $4 drug plan

I am curious about the new WalMart plan to sell drugs for $4. I will assume (yeah, I know what that spells) that drug stores such as CVS, Walgreens etc. rely on prescription drugs as a profit center. Smaller, non-chain drug stores, selling mostly OTC and prescrips have a much larger dependence on drugs to stay alive.
I well realize that one of WalMart's prescriptions (pun intended) is to immobilize small businesses with their purchasing power and drive them out of business.
Personally, I spend about $140 per month on prescription meds and all of my meds are on the list with WalMart, bringing my cost to $20. Should I look a gift horse in the mouth?
No, I'm not complaining but I can't believe that all of the meds listed will become loss-leaders and only a means to bring in more foot-traffic to WalMart.
If that is true and profit can still be made on $4 than the profit that is made on an $80 drug is obscene. Is this a WalMart scheme to drive all drugstores out of business? Is WalMart in cahoots with the Feds' Medicaid/Medicare drug plan because the Feds' plan isn't working? Or is WalMart now in the philanthropy business making them seem warm and fuzzy against unionism? A combination of all?
Of course I can ask WalMart or Walgreen but I'll get a biased opinion. What say you out there?

Simplifying in Iraq

It is really not my intention to oversimplify difficult and contentious issues. Having said that, I well realize that the Iraq dilemna is just that, a dilemna. We think we know why we went in there and in many ways we were sucessful. The main reason for going to Iraq was to introduce democracy as we know it here in the US. That was a new concept to most Iraqis but after several democratic style elections with comparitive huge turnouts they accepted it with many purple fingers.
Free elections is a staple in any democratic process. Consider an election there where the ballot asks only one question of the general populace in Iraq:

Should Americans (Coalition forces) stay in Iraq and finish the mission or should they all leave now?

The democratic answer will solve most all problems for them, for us and for the rest of the world that damns us for being there. Should we be asked to leave by the majority vote then we declare victory and leave.
Should we asked to stay then we will do so, Iraq, America and the rest of the world will know our combined resolve to finish the job while the majority of Iraqis want us there.

We wanted to bring democracy to that part of the world. We did some of that and through popular vote we either stay or leave. That may be oversimplifying but it is understood by everyone involved in a democratic process.

The Camel's nose under the tent flap?

“No one has a right to come into someone else's society and insist on playing by the rules of some other society”.
A year or so ago I read this quote and was quite impressed and totally agreed with it.
Now it seems that such righteous quotes do not apply to certain people living in our country and the following headline is ominous:

American Muslims demanding 'infidels' abide by their rules. One city caves. Will others soon follow?

The issue of Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis refusing passengers that have alcoholic beverages in a sealed container, or even the suspicion thereof, started about the year 2000. Refusing a fare requires the cabbie to go back to the end of the line and re-wait his turn. That didn’t go over well with the Muslim cabbies and they petitioned the Metropolitan Airport Commission for permission to refuse a fare without being banished to the end of the line. The MAC refused their petition and to compromise they suggested that a two color light system on the cab be made visible to customers of the 70% Muslim cabbies in Minneapolis. This should be in effect by the end of the year. The MAC caved.

So, why stop with alcohol? Muslim taxi drivers in several countries already balk at allowing seeing-eye dogs in their cars. Future demands could include not transporting women with exposed arms or hair, homosexuals, and unmarried couples. For that matter, they could ban Hindus, atheists, bartenders, croupiers, astrologers, bankers, and quarterbacks.
The wife of a former head of the Muslim American Society has explained that its goal is "to educate everyone about Islam and to follow the teachings of Islam with the hope of establishing an Islamic state", with Islamic/Sharia laws. Soon you’ll be able to beat your wife and stone her to death if you even suspect infidelity.

Perhaps Muslims cabbies should consider another line of work where they don’t have to deal with the infidels they despise so much. Perhaps making falafels in their mothers’ kitchens for other Muslims?
Camels are stinky, nasty beasts. The Arabs have an ancient saying; don’t let the camel’s nose get under the tentflap. We should take heed.

To Tip or not to Tip?

Somehow I feel quite sure that the subject of TIPPING has already appeared in this Augusta Chronicle Blog space. For you “older” and more knowledgeable bloggers please let me know if it has. I have a problem with tipping, but let me clarify:
Going to a nice restaurant and being well served and attended to, tipping the waiter/waitress is a natural and appropriate way to express your appreciation. Tipping the Maitre D’, the Sommelier, the Chef, the coat check girl and Valet runner becomes a little much. Going to a buffet restaurant where you have to serve yourself with drinks the wait staff fully expects a 15% tip. Why are they even there?

Taxi drivers, doormen, bell captains, bellboys, hair stylists, shoe shiners, croupiers, car washes, the list goes on but most anyone in the personal service business expects and get tips. Even the folks at Starbucks have a tip jar. Do I get a better Latte if I tip? Are we supposed to feel empathy for those who are in the business of living off tips? In some parts of the country mailmen expect a generous tip at Christmas time for doing their jobs.

It can’t be good for our wonderful IRS, that taxes our earnings, since I do not for a moment believe that all tips are declared. I’m not saying stop tipping; I will say that all taxes on tangible goods provided should be deducted before applying the appropriate tip.
I will also say that this tipping business is getting out of hand.

Mahdi, or the twelfth Imam

Many blogs have been written about Islam, radical Islam and Islamofascists. I have actively participated with some fairly strong comments and although I don't wish to belabor the point, it is nevertheless a very important subject that can not and definitely should not be ignored.

In spite of what Ted Turner says, in today's world there is strong opposition to Iran's development of nuclear capabilities, especially nuclear weapons. Even most Arab nations are opposed to the idea. Some speculate that for Iran and their madman president, Ahmadinejad, to have such weaponry could put that nation in charge of the region's oil. A purely economical choice and decision. I believe there is much more to it than that.

Iran is a theocracy of primarily Shiite Muslims. Although not a cleric in the literal sense, Ahmadinejad is a fervent Shiite Muslim with some convictions of his own. He and most of his followers believe without any doubt that a direct descendant of the prophet Mohammed, the Twelfth Imam, aka Mahdi, aka their Messiah, is amongst them. They have also been taught that it will need a total, worldwide, Armageddon to bring him out. That is why he is itching for a fight. Incidentally, the Mahdi will be accompanied by Jesus. (Read Revelations)

The need to create this Armageddon is the primary need for nuclear weapons. Once this scorched earth policy has been realized, the world will become a peaceful place to live guided only by Shiite Islam. Wiping Israel off the map is only a small casualty of this much grandiozer war.

That, according to Ahmabinejad, is what the world can look forward to and furthermore it is imminent and up to him to accomplish that.

He is dead serious, as we must be, to take all means necessary to prevent that.