Commie NY Democrats Acting Like Little Children – Refuse to Stand for Pledge of Allegiance

Hey, New Yorkers!  Vote these whiny, red-diaper-doper-babies out of office!

H/T – Weasel Zippers

UK study: Shari’a courts ‘incompatible’

From our “We told you so department”

A simple comparison of basic human rights as guaranteed by Islamic governments should have been enough of a reason to outlaw sharia for all time but Brits are as slow as they are arrogant.

Jonny Paul, jpost correspondent in london 30 June, 2009, JPOST
Dozens of Islamic courts operating in the United Kingdom are “seriously out of step with trends in Western legislation,” according to a report published by London think tank Civitas on Monday.
-Duh!

Denis MacEoin, author of the Civitas report “Shari’a Law or One Law For All?” wrote that Shari’a rulings contained great potential for controversy and could involve acts contrary to UK legal norms and human rights legislation.
-Ok, you figured it out now fix it.

According to the report, Shari’a courts should not be recognized under Britain’s 1996 Arbitration Act, as they claim authority over the private lives of individuals in a way that is contrary to the British tradition.

“Among the rulings, we find some that advise illegal actions and others that transgress human rights standards as applied by British courts,” MacEoin wrote.

Examples set out in the study include a ruling that no Muslim woman may marry a non-Muslim man unless he converts to Islam, and that any children of a woman who does should be taken from her until she marries a Muslim.
-Westerners have attempted to wake up our governments to the truth of islam for years all we got for it was scorn, ridicule and threats.

Other rulings, according to the report, approve polygamous marriage and enforce a wife’s “duty” to have sex with her husband on demand.
-That one I can sort of understand (relax, I am kidding)

“The fact that so many Shari’a rulings in Britain relate to cases concerning divorce and custody of children is of particular concern, as women are not equal in Shari’a law, and Shari’a contains no specific commitment to the best interests of the child that is fundamental to family law in the UK. Under Shari’a, a male child belongs to the father after the age of seven, regardless of circumstances,” the report said.

“Thus, in October 2008, the House of Lords ruled that Shari’a was incompatible with human rights when a Lebanese woman sought asylum in the UK because, if she had been sent back to Lebanon, she would have been ordered to hand over her son to a violently abusive husband,” it added.
-A violently abusive husband, that could be any married muslim male.

Just a Little Humor

Doc’, over at Mr2ndAmendment emailed us some political cartoons.  I picked the two that I liked:

This next one is in honor of Billy Mays.  He may have been more than a tad bit irritating at 3:00 a.m. in the morning, but I enjoyed watching his Discovery Channel show, Pitch Men:

NY City Mayor Ixnays Mulsim Holidays

It’s about time someone in New York stood up to the religion that brought us 9/11.

Bloomberg: Schools Can’t Observe Muslim Holidays
WTEN

NEW YORK (AP)  — New York’s City Council has passed a nonbinding resolution asking the Education Department to observe two important Muslim holidays. But Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the city is so diverse schools can’t observe every holiday.

[…]

The resolution was passed Tuesday. It asks the Bloomberg administration to observe the holidays in schools and for the state to require it by amending education law.

[…]

Schumer Drops PC-Speak in Effort to Push Amnesty Bill

I think a quote from Marcus Tullius Cicero is appropriate here:

“For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments…”

Democrats play word games on immigration
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
June 30, 2009 – Washington Examiner

On June 24, Sen. Charles Schumer gave a remarkable speech on immigration.  Preparing the way for the Obama administration’s expected push for comprehensive reform, Schumer seemed to adopt a newer, tougher-sounding tone as he promised that a bill would be passed during “this Congress.”

“People who enter the United States without our permission are illegal aliens, and illegal aliens should not be treated the same as people who entered the United States legally,” Schumer said.

“Illegal immigration is wrong — plain and simple,” he continued. “When we use phrases like ‘undocumented workers,’ we convey a message to the American people that their government is not serious about combating illegal immigration, which the American people overwhelmingly oppose.”

Schumer can read the polls as well as anybody. He knows he can’t spout a bunch of pro-amnesty euphemisms and satisfy the voters’ desire for strict controls on illegal immigration. That means he has to at least adopt the language of toughness. So out goes that word cherished among many Democrats: “undocumented.”

Except not everyone got the message. The very next day, Schumer and other lawmakers met with President Barack Obama to discuss immigration. And guess what the president said? Not once, not twice, but three times:

» “We need a effective way to recognize and legalize the status of undocumented workers who are here.”

»  “[The American people are] concerned that any immigration reform simply will be a short-term legalization of undocumented workers with no long-term solution.”

»  “The 12 million or so undocumented workers are here [are a] group that we have to deal with in a practical, common-sense way.”

And not only that, just a few days earlier, at a prayer breakfast with a Hispanic group, Obama said we cannot “tolerate employers who exploit undocumented workers in order to drive down wages.”

That’s a lot of “undocumented.” Which suggests a question for Schumer. Do the president’s words convey a message to the American people that their government is not serious about combating illegal immigration?

Expect a “Value-Added” Tax

It’s not enough to bleed you of your had-earned money via the recent “Cap-and-Trade” bill (which I lovingly refer to as:  “Cap-n-Bleed” ) passed by the House.  Now, the commies are setting their sights one gutting everyone via a value-added tax.

If history is any guide, a VAT will have several adverse effects. Specifically, a VAT will:

*  Expand the cost of government. Countries with VATs have a much heavier total tax burden than those without VATs. Before the creation of VATs, the burden of taxation in Europe was not that much larger than it was in the United States. However, since the late 1960s, when countries in Europe began to adopt VATs, Europe’s aggregate tax burden has increased by about 50 percent while the U.S. tax burden has remained relatively constant.

*  Inadvertently increase income tax rates. One of the main arguments for the VAT is that it is a less destructive way to raise revenue. This is theoretically true, but irrelevant. In the real world, the VAT has been used as an excuse to increase income taxes as a way to maintain “dis­tributional neutrality.” Indeed, income taxes in Europe today are higher than they were when VATs were implemented.

*  Slow economic growth and destroy jobs. A VAT undermines economic growth for two reasons. First, it reduces incentives to engage in productive behavior by driving a larger wedge between pre-tax income and post-tax consumption. Second, it facilitates larger gov­ernment and the concomitant transfer of resources from the productive sector of the economy to the public sector, diminishing economic efficiency.

Some “value,” eh?:

We’ll Need to Raise Taxes Soon
Expect Congress to seriously consider a value-added tax.
By ROGER C. ALTMAN – Wall Street Journal

Only five months after Inauguration Day, the focus of Washington’s economic and domestic policy is already shifting. This reflects the emergence of much larger budget deficits than anyone expected. Indeed, federal deficits may average a stunning $1 trillion annually over the next 10 years. This worsened outlook is stirring unease on Main Street and beginning to reorder priorities for President Barack Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership. By 2010, reducing the deficit will become their primary focus.

Why has the deficit outlook changed? Two main reasons: The burst of spending in recent years and the growing likelihood of a weak economic recovery. The latter would mean considerably lower federal revenues, the compiling of more interest on our growing debt, and thus higher deficits. Yes, the President’s Council of Economic Advisors is still forecasting a traditional cyclical recovery — i.e., real growth of 3.2% next year and 4% in 2011. But the latest data suggests that we’re on a much slower path.

[…]

Mr. Obama and his economic advisers understand this deficit outlook and undoubtedly view it as unsustainable. They also understand that increasing deficit concerns complicate their efforts toward universal health-insurance legislation, which is clearly a top priority of this administration. According to the Congressional Budget Office, which released its latest forecast June 16, such legislation would mandate more than $1 trillion of new federal spending over 10 years. Winning support for that much new spending — in the face of record deficits — will be a challenge.

[…]

In short we’ll have to raise taxes.

[…]

We all know the recent and bitter history of tax struggles in Washington, let alone Mr. Obama’s pledge to exempt those earning less than $250,000 from higher income taxes. This suggests that, possibly next year, Congress will seriously consider a value-added tax (VAT). A bipartisan deficit reduction commission, structured like the one on Social Security headed by Alan Greenspan in 1982, may be necessary to create sufficient support for a VAT or other new taxes.

This challenge may be the toughest one Mr. Obama faces in his first term. Fortunately, the new president is enormously gifted. That’s important, because it is no longer a matter of whether tax revenues must increase, but how.

Mr. Altman, founder and chairman of Evercore Partners, was deputy secretary of the Treasury in the first Clinton administration.

Obama’s Kenyan Birth Certificate Hits Over $1,000,000 on E-Bay!!!

Wow!  This is getting very interesting.  The person who claims to have Obama’s Kenyan Birth Certificate has been shut down several times in the past by E-Bay.  So, he is now advertising it as a “dissertation” on Obama’s birth in order to bypass E-Bay’s censors.

What makes this really interesting is that the seller is guaranteeing the “dissertation” and is permitting the buyer to bring along a forensic examiner to verify the document before shelling out any money.

Is it real or a forgery?  I don’t know, but it certainly will be interesting to watch how this all plays out in the future.

There are eight days left on the bidding.

The E-Bay item can be found here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160345324422

UPDATE:  ACK!!!  Frackin’ E-Bay just removed the item immediately after I posted this dang thing!

Honduras, Warts and All, Deserves a Chance

The New York Post gets it right; Honduras was protecting its Constitution by ousting a rogue commie President.  So, why does Obama support an ousted commie like Manuel Zelaya?  Oh, wait.  That’s right.  Obama is also a communist usurper who thinks that a Constitution is only a stupid piece of paper from a bygone era that doesn’t apply to him unless he can use it as a weapon against someone else:

A ‘COUP’ TO PROTECT A CONSTITUTION
HONDURAS OUSTS A ROGUE PRESIDENT
By RAY WALSER
June 30, 2009 – New York Post

ON Sunday, the citizens of Honduras woke up with one president and went to bed with an other. Manuel Zelaya was forced out of the country — replaced, with full backing from the Congress, the nation’s courts, and its military with Interim President Robert Micheletti.

Some have denounced this dramatic change as a “coup d’etat” and an assault on democracy. In truth, it was much more of a last-ditch effort to protect Honduras’ constitutional order and rule of law from a reckless populist.

Honduras and the United States have a long history of friendly relations. We signed a free-trade treaty in 2005; Honduras was an early contributor to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

But relations chilled, and chilled hard, after Zelaya won election nearly four years ago.

Zelaya sees Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro as beacons for the future. As president, he tried to steer Honduras hard left — but succeeded mainly in boosting corruption and cronyism. The independent monitors at Transparency International now give Honduras the same ranking for corruption as Libya and Ethiopia.

Honduras is a poor nation, and got worse on Zelaya’s watch. But rather than blame the global downturn or his own failures, Zelaya sought to rally the masses behind him by fingering the nation’s elites as behind the nation’s woes.

He sought vindication by ordering a national referendum that, he said, could alter the Constitution and allow him to run for re-election. And when every free, democratic institution from the Electoral Tribunal to the Supreme Court said no to his proposal, Zelaya pushed ahead anyway.

Last week, he called the military on the carpet, demanding it support his referendum. Gen. Romeo Vasquez, the head of the armed forces, considered this an illegal order, and refused to play ball — so Zelaya fired him. (He accepted the defense minister’s resignation, too.)

The next day, the Supreme Court ruled the firing unjustified. Zelaya refused to obey its decision. The court, he declared, worked only for the rich and caused problems for “democracy.”

At every step, Zelaya’s chief international backer, Hugo Chavez, cheered him on.

He’d set Sunday as the day of his contra-constitutional referendum. Instead, the Congress, the courts and the military stepped in and pulled the plug on Zelaya’s maneuverings.

They sent him packing on a plane to Costa Rica. Then, in a deliberate, bipartisan manner, they selected a civilian president to serve through scheduled elections in November.

This was no coup, but a desperate act to protect the nation’s constitution and its institutions from presidential excess and a descent into misrule Chavez-style.

Chavez, of course, is outraged, vowing to do everything short of landing Venezuelan marines in Honduras to restore Zelaya. If his ally doesn’t recover power, “el Loco” will lose face at home and throughout the region. Sources report Venezuelan agitators and operatives are already on the ground in the Honduran capitol of Tegucigalpa and elsewhere. Trouble can be expected.

Utopians in Washington believe that the Organization of American States, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, the European Union and the State Department will be able to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Let Ze laya back in power, they urge; defend “democracy.”

This simply ignores the fact that restoring Zelaya would undercut every free institution in the nation — green-lighting every extra-legal move he might take in the name of the people.

Washington realists recognize this fact and fear a return engagement. If Zelaya achieves his ambition and returns to power, he could condemn Honduras to years of vendetta politics and populism of the worst sort — delivering a weakened nation into the eager embrace of Hugo Chavez & Co.

Letting a friendly country fall into the Chavez camp does no one any good. The new government of Honduras wants to preserve peace and the constitutional order. Warts and all, it deserves the chance.

Ray Walser is senior policy analyst for Latin America at The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org).

Researchers say children of illegal immigrants a big expense in education, healthcare

All of the pro democrat – I am entitled crowd will soon find out the hard way that billions in debt will require the government to ration services. Once “entitlements” are rationed, all the uneducated masses will find out that they are way behind the wealthy campaign supporters on the list.

By Bill O’Neal, 29 June, 2009
The White House is certainly making its case when it comes to immigration freeform. We’ve heard talk of tougher enforcement along the border and in the heartland, but when it comes to those who have been living in the United States illegally, researchers will tell you the cost can be quite staggering.
-A year ago when the economy was still relatively strong a study showed that each illegal cost the state of Florida $37 per hour. More than most legal residents made. The cost will only go up.

“There are over three million children of illegal immigrants in America’s schools, and that likely costs taxpayers at least $30 billion a year to educate those children,” said Steven Camarota, with the Center for Immigration Studies. Then you add in the costs of healthcare for billions more.
-The pro illegal crowd refuses to discuss long lines in hospital emergency rooms or the thousands of hospitals that have closed them. The next liberal that whines to me about horrible service and long lines at a hospital will be pissed off when I laugh in his/her face.

Obama’s Housing Plan Failed; More Stimulus Needed

Yeah, let’s throw some more money down the crapper:

Housing in Peril as Obama Fails to Get Breakthrough

June 29 (Bloomberg) — Driving through Riverside, California, Bruce Norris pointed to a half-dozen empty houses with “For Sale” signs stuck in untended lawns that he said investors might buy if banks would just extend some credit.

“People today look at us as the enemy,” said Norris, 57, head of Riverside-based Norris Group, which purchases and renovates homes to rent or sell. “That’s a big problem for housing because if we can’t get the financing we need, a lot of these properties are going to sit vacant.”

Four months after President Barack Obama pledged $275 billion to shore up home sales, the engine that powered every U.S. recovery since 1960 is stalled. Bankers’ reluctance to finance buyers who won’t live in properties is one barrier to a turnaround. Stricter qualifying rules and a rise in the cost of residential loans to 5.42 percent have impeded new mortgage lending, which is at a 13-year low. An inventory of 2.1 million unoccupied houses on the market, created by the fastest foreclosure pace in history, may be a drag on a revival.

The $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit in the U.S. economic stimulus package and a government program to subsidize some mortgage payments have had little effect, according to Eric Belsky, executive director of Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“It hasn’t been much more than a see-sawing of data,” Belsky said in an interview. “Housing has led the U.S. economy out of every recession for at least 50 years, and for that to happen again more stimulus is going to be needed.”

CLICK HERE to read the whole shebang